[i]

THE FACE OF
MANCHURIA
KOREA
& RUSSIAN
TURKESTAN

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All rights reserved

[vii]

Less than three years ago I made a journey with a friend, Miss MacDougall, across the Chinese Empire from north-east to south-west, and while my interests in the changes going on there was intensified, a profound anxiety took possession of my mind as to the effect these changes would produce in the national life. The European and other Powers who had wrangled over the possibility of commercial and political advantages to be obtained from the Chinese Government (after the Boxer troubles) have withdrawn to a certain extent, but like snarling dogs dragged from their prey, they still keep covetous eyes upon it, and both Russia and Japan continue steadily but silently to strengthen their hold upon its borders. These borders are Manchuria and Korea, and it is in this direction that fresh developments must be expected. I read all the available literature bearing on the subject, but so rapidly had the changes occurred that books were already out of date, and they failed to make me see the country as it now is.

As an instance of this, let me quote Whigham’s (correspondent to the Morning Post) “Manchuria and Korea,” published in 1904.[1] “One cannot seriously[x] believe that Japan would ever invade Manchuria, unless, indeed, she be caught by the madness with which the gods first visit those whom they wish to destroy; but if ever her army did occupy Moukden she would only find another Moscow in the ancient capital of the Manchus, and when all is said and done what would be the use? She could never hope to hold the Liao valley for ever against Russia; Great Britain might just as well try to hold Normandy again against France.... The conclusion is that as far as Manchuria is concerned, Russia is even now more or less invulnerable,” &c. &c. This was published the year the Russo-Japanese war took place.

Taking heart of grace by the kind reception of my former book on China, I determined to visit Manchuria and Korea, and to try and describe them by pen and brush as I had described the Face of China. My former fellow-traveller was willing and eager to repeat our wanderings, so we set out on February 1st of this year, 1910, via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Much has been written by various travellers about this part of the journey, but the questions that I wanted answered are mostly ignored by them. Baedeker is wholly inadequate. I begin therefore my tale from the point where we crossed the border into Manchuria, so as to give more continuity to the narrative and avoid repetition. On our return journey across Siberia I give details which may possibly be of service to those who intend travelling on that line, and also the general information about the condition of the country at the[xi] present time, which I have gathered from reliable sources since my return.

When we started for our four months’ tour we had no intention of extending it to Turkestan, but finding that a railway line connected it with the one on which we were travelling, and that it could be reached in three days from Samara on the Trans-Siberian line, we decided to include it in our programme and so vary the journey home. It proved to be of extraordinary artistic interest, not to mention its historical importance both as the centre of Moslem learning and of Russian experiments in civilizing Central Asia. Russia looks with a jealous eye upon the traveller, and a special permit has to be obtained in order to travel through Turkestan, even on the railway line. Not only is it necessary to apply for this through the British Embassy at St. Petersburg, but several weeks elapse before a notification can be received that the Russian Government graciously permits the traveller to cross Turkestan. We were informed also that when all these formalities had been duly observed, the traveller was still liable to be stopped by the police on the ground that they (the police) had not received official notice of the traveller’s coming, and in that case he would be ordered to return by the way he came. Despite this discouraging information we determined to try our luck, and in due course received a “note verbale” from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at St. Petersburg, addressed to the British Embassy, permitting us to visit Tashkent, Samarkand,[xii] and Bokhara. In point of fact our difficulty proved to be not that of getting in, but that of getting out of Russian territory, as will be seen later on.

Despite the difficulties, Russian Turkestan is well worth visiting, and had the scope of this book permitted, I should like to have added further illustrations of Samarkand. All the illustrations suffer from lack of time, and the earlier ones from the inclemency of the weather, but they are an attempt to show as accurately as possible what the countries and people are like, and especially to give correct colouring, in this way supplementing the photographs with which many previous works on these countries have been illustrated.

We were warned before undertaking the journey that great dangers would lie in our path. I should indeed regret depriving the arm-chair critic of the pleasure of threatening us with tigers, brigands, Hun Hutzes, and the lowest class of Japanese ruffian, or of his special satisfaction in shaking his head over the follies of those who run into unnecessary danger; but in the interest of other travellers I must confess that we met none of these things, though doubtless it would have added to the piquancy of the narrative to have done so. The only striped beasts we saw in the forests were chipmunks, and the only people who were to be feared were the monks in a certain Buddhist monastery.

I cannot omit a word of thanks to the many missionaries who helped to make our journey such a[xiii] pleasant one, and without whose kindly aid we should have missed a large part of its interest. The Medical Mission work of the Irish and Scotch Presbyterians in Manchuria, and the various branches of work of American and Australian Presbyterians in Korea have been briefly described in this book, but their profound value can only be appreciated by those who have come in personal contact with them. In the troublous times of the last decade they have proved their worth, and I only hope that the ominous cloud still overhanging the land may be dispersed and a time of prosperous growth succeed the trials which they have triumphantly endured.

As I write these words the June number World’s Work falls into my hands, and I read what Japanese writers have to say upon the Manchurian question. Adachi Kinnosuke points out that, despite the immense financial strain of the war with Russia, Japan has trebled her army and strengthened her navy to an equal extent during the few years that have elapsed since that struggle, which cost her the lives of 300,000 men. The reason which he assigns for these military preparations is the necessity of being able to face China. At the close of the Russo-Japanese war Baron Komura tried to induce the Chinese Government to open Manchuria to Japanese colonists, but as Manchuria is imperatively needed by China for her own surplus population, which are pouring into it daily by thousands in the early spring, it was only natural that she should resent the proposal, and refuse to grant the desired[xiv] permission. Hence the present attitude of Japan. “If you do not allow our people to colonise Manchuria peacefully, there is only one thing for us to do: to enter it anyhow.” Yet the density of population in Japan at the present time is considerably less than that of Great Britain, of Belgium, of Holland, of Saxony, of Alsace Lorraine, of Hesse, of Baden; not to mention other non-European countries. The new Russo-Japanese Alliance is concerned mainly with their railways, and Japan insists on China relinquishing her project of a railway into Mongolia. Now it is an open secret that Russia is to have a railway direct from Irkutsk to Peking—the inference is obvious. The situation is an interesting one; but I have neither the knowledge nor the impertinence requisite for prophesying the course of events. My object will be attained if I can in any way succeed in describing the condition of affairs at the present moment.

The latest step in advance is the annexation of Korea, the highroad into Manchuria.

August 26, 1910.

[2]

There is always a thrill of expectation for the genuine traveller on crossing the frontier into an unknown country, which even the sight of the custom-house fails to dispel. In the case of Manchuria we were fortunate enough to escape the custom-house altogether, as having no registered luggage we only received a perfunctory visit from the politest of officials in our railway carriage at about 11 P.M. While all the rest of the travellers had to turn out and spend an hour or more in an offensive-smelling office, we comfortably went to bed and awoke next morning to find a glorious, dazzling sun shining on the snowy plain between Manchuria (town) and our terminus, Kharbin. The railway station is in the Russian town, which has been built up round it, and still looks painfully new: it lies on the banks of the great Sungari River, at the junction of the Trans-Siberian line with the line to Moukden and Peking. After a night’s rest in the Russian hotel we started[4] for Hulan, a Chinese town about sixteen miles to the north of Kharbin.

No Chinese vehicle is allowed in the Russian quarter, so we were obliged to take a droshky to the Chinese town, about a half mile distant, where our belongings were transferred to the sleigh, which was the only possible vehicle for crossing the open country. It was of a most primitive description, a sort of raft on runners, with a little straw on it covered with a rug. Our luggage was somewhat insecurely corded on, and we seated ourselves in the midst of it, only too soon to become acutely aware of the extraordinary number of corners which it possessed. Between the shafts, which consisted of two sapling birches denuded of their branches, was a shaggy pony, and another little pony ran alongside to give what further assistance he could, both animals having a miscellaneous harness of bits of old cord, which looked incapable of enduring any strain, though the event proved quite the contrary. We passed through the old town, which was gay with New Year decorations, the doors all bright with tutelary deities, freshly pasted up. Already the streets were filled with traffic, heavily-laden waggons of corn drawn by teams varying from four to eight, stacks of straw on rafts, fitted with runners similar to those of the one we were on, and all the various equipages likely to be found in such a nondescript place. The drollest of all was a little wooden house on runners, with a tall chimney, which we supposed to be on its way to some other permanent position. This, however, proved to be the[5] bus plying daily between Kharbin and Hulan, the place of our destination. It contained eleven passengers inside, and a stove. Outside was a heap of bedding on a wooden box tied on a narrow ledge at the back, upon which lounged another passenger.

It was desperately cold and almost impossible to keep one’s extremities warm, but the Chinese cope successfully with this difficulty. Nearly every one wears ear muffs (some of them beautifully embroidered and fur-lined), or big turned-up collars as high as their heads, or caps coming over the ears, and at the other extremity large felt boots. Passing through the busy town we plunged down into the river-bed of the Sungari, a most perilous descent, as the sledges slither away and sometimes turn completely round, unless the driver dexterously contrives to push them into a convenient rut. We passed one heavy cart that had turned completely on to its side, while yet another was being dug out of a rut with a pickaxe. The ponies show their mettle, and though they have the worst of tempers, and not infrequently give a sudden bite to the passers-by, they work with a will to drag their often too heavy loads over the difficult ground. We passed the landing-stage, whence in summer the steamers ply daily up to Hulan.

After struggling up the farther bank we passed over a bumpy plain for several hours, with various incidents to mark the road. Our umbrellas soon disappeared, then a collision sent a basket flying. Sometimes we were in imminent peril as some passing vehicle would[6] skid violently; once I thought escape was impossible, as a large cart crashed into our side, missing my arm by a hair’s-breadth, but we strove—I hope not unsuccessfully—to imitate the Chinese imperturbability of appearance. During one of our halts for repairs we were overtaken by the above-mentioned bus, and, behold! there was the Chinaman still on the back of it, trying to take a nap. We passed and repassed the vehicle, and he was always in the act of trying to sleep in some different attitude, but apparently never succeeding—the only Chinaman I have ever met who failed to sleep in any attitude whatever!

These plains are very fertile, and as soon as spring comes there is a steady stream of workers to be seen arriving from China proper, especially from the province of Shantung, to which they return when the harvest is ended. Many come to accumulate enough money during eight or nine years to buy land and bring their families up to live here. In fact we met some emigrants already arriving with all their scanty possessions. The Chinese Government is now waking up to the importance of colonisation on the borders of the empire, in order to check the sure and steady pressure of the Russians from without.

As we approached Hulan we came to another river to be crossed, but not nearly so large a one as the Sungari. Few foreigners come to such an out-of-the-way corner of the empire, so people came hurrying out to see us, calling to one another, “Come and see the shaggy women!” “These shaggy women[7] are tip-top!” The expression “shaggy” seems to have been first applied to the Russians, who wear their hair somewhat loose and long, but it is now the common designation for foreigners of all nationalities.

We travelled slowly, though occasionally our little ponies would break into a trot; then the driver would leap into the air, fold his legs beneath him and alight seated cross-legged on the cart, with a solid thud, like some gigantic frog. Hulan is quite a Chinese town, and indeed Manchuria is rapidly becoming populated with the Chinese, for whom its fertile plains offer an excellent home. The old Manchu towns are in a decadent condition, and can only hope for a fresh lease of life by new blood being introduced from the south. No wonder the Japanese cast covetous eyes on the land where crops produce an increase of 100 per cent. The crops are mainly wheat and beans, both of which are being largely exported to Britain. Great quantities of oil are obtained from the beans, and the refuse is made into large flat cakes, nearly as big as cart wheels, which form excellent fuel. The price of beans in the north is three times as great as it was a year ago, and the people in Manchuria are on the whole more prosperous than elsewhere in the Chinese Empire.

On Sunday morning we attended service in the Mission Hall, and received a warm welcome from the people, to whom we were formally presented at the conclusion of the service. The Mission is still in its infancy, but promises well, and when the medical[8] side is started will make more rapid progress. The next day “the faithful of Hulan” sent us gifts of cakes, and asked when we were leaving, that they might speed us on our way. We left too early, however, to go and thank them in person, as we had a four hours’ sleigh ride in order to catch the express at Kharbin, which only goes twice a week direct to Moukden. Unfortunately we had mistaken the day, and we doubly regretted that we had not waited to return the courtesies shown to us.

The first section of the railway line running southwards is still in the hands of Russia, and one’s attention is continually arrested by the large numbers of soldiers who are kept all along the line to guard it. Kwan-cheng-tze is the terminus of the Russian line: it is not quite half-way from Kharbin to Moukden. The Japanese call their station at Kwan-cheng-tze Changchun, which is rather puzzling to the traveller who is unaware that the place boasts two names. All passengers have to change trains here.

We had a leisurely journey across the plains, and arrived at Kwan-cheng-tze about 8.30, our halting-place for the night. It boasts a brand new Japanese hotel just opposite the station, which was radiantly clean and fresh, such a contrast to the Russian one at Kharbin. There was no lack of attention, for the Chinese boys flew to do our bidding, and fetched us tea unbidden. In the morning we started at 8.30 on the Japanese section of the line. The cars are long open corridor ones, and kept admirably clean, but one[9] misses the privacy so dear to the Englishman. All day long we slowly wended our way southward, stopping at many stations of a mushroom growth: it requires no imagination to fancy yourself back in Europe as far as the houses are concerned, but the people are quite out of keeping with them. The train had a sonorous bell attached to the engine, absolutely like that of a church, which heralded our approach to the stations. At almost every station there is a little house where hot water is to be obtained; the moment the train stops out dash numbers of Chinese, carrying their teapots, which they get replenished. We had no need to bestir ourselves, as the conductor was most attentive and kept us well supplied. The trains always have Japanese military officials on board, who usually go only short stages, being replaced by others whenever they get out. The trains are very crowded, and in the third class they are packed like monkeys in cages: some of the carriages have three shelves one above the other, on which the passengers lie, and as they are lighted at the top by a single dim candle, at night the top man certainly has the best of it.

At 6 P.M. we steamed into Moukden punctual to the minute, and found a deafening crowd ready to lay hold of the passengers. We were greeted by a man possessing a few words of English, and able to understand where we wanted to go, so we were glad to entrust ourselves to his care. He even satisfied any curiosity we might have had as to the personal[10] appearance of our host, whose main feature, judging from the description, was a huge moustache. The drive was thrilling, and the five miles were none too long; it was the New Year festival, and all sorts of things were to be seen in the thronged streets. Brilliant moonlight illuminated the city from above, and lanterns and fireworks lit it up intermittently from within. A short drive brought us near a thoroughly Burmese dagoba of old times, and then through a horrible iron archway of the worst type of modern times. Farther on we passed through the gloomy gateway in the big city wall, and found an almost impenetrable throng of sightseers. Our driver had no longer a chance of pointing out interesting buildings, and giving us details of his faith, &c., with which he had varied the earlier part of the drive, for he was obliged to keep up a monotonous shout of “hech! hech! hech!” only varied by what sounded like “hurry on, hurry on!” a much needed injunction to his steed. After about an hour’s drive we reached the group of Mission buildings, hospitals, schools, and dwelling-houses situated on the river bank, which is radiant with lotus blossom in the summer-time. But I must not begin describing the charms of Moukden at the end of a chapter: it demands one to itself. As the relation of Manchuria to China is but little known, it may be of interest to the reader to have the brief account which forms the beginning of the next chapter, but after this warning it is easy for those who are not interested to skip the next four pages.

The story of the rise of the Manchu dynasty is like a romance, and no parallel to it is to be found in the pages of history. In the middle of the sixteenth century there was no Manchu Empire, and the Manchus themselves were wild, uncultured barbarians without any written language, living in caves which they hollowed in the earth, and engaged in constant warfare with other tribes living like themselves in the northern part of that country which we call Manchuria, the central and southern part being inhabited by the Chinese. In the year 1559 Noorhachu was born, with the prospect of becoming ruler over six little hamlets; by the year 1616 he had conquered all the adjacent tribes and founded the Manchu kingdom, receiving from the “great Ministers” the title of Ying Ming—“brave and illustrious.” Noorhachu’s military conquests and singular political sagacity alarmed the Chinese, whose frequent attacks and whose murder of his father and grandfather had roused his deep-seated enmity. He prepared an army of picked men, and drew up a paper of “seven hates,” addressed to the Emperor of China.[12] Instead of despatching it to the Emperor, he addressed it to Heaven, burning the document with full sacrificial rites, after which he started his campaign (1617) by attacking the Chinese in the territory east of Moukden. In the midst of this campaign he was recalled to his capital, Hingking, by the news that a Chinese army of 200,000 men was approaching. On reaching Moukden this force divided into four armies of equal size: they were all in turn defeated by the smaller forces of Noorhachu within the space of five days, the number of killed being computed at 45,000. After one month’s rest he led his victorious troops to the conquest of Moukden and Liao Yang, and at the latter place he built a palace for himself and made it the seat of government.

Noorhachu, or as he was afterwards styled, Taidsoo = the Great Ancestor, was far-sighted enough to recognise that his only means of holding the large territory which he had won was by wise and good administration, and in this he was successful. In 1625 he retired to Moukden and made it his capital; in the following year he died there, after an unsuccessful campaign against the Chinese. They were led by a determined general who brought (for the first time) “terrific western cannon” against him, which had been cast by Jesuit missionaries.

Noorhachu was buried in the Foo Ling tomb, east of Moukden, a fitting resting-place for the great founder of the Manchu dynasty. It was during his son’s reign that the Manchu dynasty was firmly placed[13] upon the throne of China in the person of Noorhachu’s grandson, a boy of five years old (1644). His father had been summoned by the Chinese to aid them against several hordes of rebels who had devastated the empire, and he sent a powerful army led by his brother. The Manchus, after defeating the rebel army, marched on Peking, where Li Dsuchung, the most noted rebel leader, had entrenched himself, and where the last of the Ming Emperors had in consequence committed suicide. Li Dsuchung had indeed proclaimed himself Emperor in his stead, but after a reign of one day he fled from the city at the approach of the Manchus, was pursued by them, and severely defeated. The Manchu general at once sent for his nephew—the ninth son of the reigning monarch, a child of five years old—and placed him upon the throne, himself acting as Regent. The new Emperor received the title of Ta-tsing, or “Great Pure”—the name of the present dynasty. The Regent was an able ruler, and soon succeeded in dispersing the rebels and restoring order throughout the empire. At the end of six months comparative peace had been established, and the Regent issued a proclamation that all who submitted to the new rule would enjoy the same rank, position, and emoluments, as they had done under the Ming dynasty.[2] He ordered sacrifices to be offered at the Ming tombs, and that a tomb should be erected[14] for the last of them, where sacrifices should also be offered. He postponed the enforcement of the humiliating law requiring change of dress, the shaving of the head, and wearing of the queue and Manchu cap, and he promised those who complained of the neglect of etiquette and music among officials, that proper attention should be given to this matter as soon as war was at an end. It is an interesting fact that the Manchus should afterwards have so completely succeeded in imposing their dress on the Chinaman, the wearing of the queue becoming universal; but equally interesting is it to observe that the women never could be made to adopt it. The Manchu woman’s dress is to this day quite different from the Chinese, from its wonderful wing-like head-dress down to its large shoes. The Chinese woman refused to unbind her feet, and was in consequence never admitted within the precincts of the palace at Peking. In fact it may be stated that whereas it is impossible to distinguish between a Chinaman and a Manchu, there is no part of a Chinese woman’s dress which is quite the same as a Manchu’s. The latter have different styles of arranging their hair from the spreadeagle style, so commonly seen in Peking, to the curious one shown in the sketch (see next chapter), and also wear different kinds of shoes—some with a heel attached to the centre of the sole, others with a flat white sole some two inches thick.

The foregoing historical details are mainly drawn from Dr. Ross’s book, “The Manchus, or the Reigning Dynasty of China.” The uniqueness of the story lies[15] in the fact that when the Manchus conquered China they were merely a horde of savages attacking a highly educated people, infinitely their superiors in number and resources. They not only conquered them, but for centuries they imposed their yoke upon them, always hated, yet always obeyed. As the centuries elapsed the Manchus grew weaker in their own country, and never fused with the conquered race. In China proper they still live apart; walled Manchu cities may be found within many walled Chinese cities; and it is only last year that the stringent rule forbidding Manchu women to marry Chinese husbands has been rescinded. It needs no explanation to see why the opposite rule held with regard to Manchu men marrying Chinese wives, who, ipso facto, lost their nationality.

I have tried to show in the foregoing pages how the Manchus won their position in China, and also how the southern part of Manchuria, including Moukden, was originally Chinese. Those who wish to wrest it from China are seeking to take an integral part of the empire. No one who visits Moukden can fail to see that it is a thoroughly Chinese city, with its magnificent walls and gateways, and the big drum tower and bell, like the one at Peking. Alas for the modern utilitarian spirit! Already they are beginning to pull down the fine old gateways, and to replace the inimitable shop fronts with shabby imitations of European ones.

It was cold weather when we walked through[16] those fascinating streets, and in the fish shops we saw quantities of frozen as well as dried comestibles. Game was plentiful and cheap, and the frozen deer had quite a life-like appearance, standing waiting for a customer. In one street nothing but boots was being sold, and the fact was evident from afar, for outside the shops were hung gaily painted effigies of boots, some two feet in length. Above some shops were dragons, over others tigers, or the phœnix, or lotus blossoms all painted in every colour of the rainbow, and hanging from them signboards bearing the name of the shopkeepers. The cash shops have almost a screen of strings of gigantic cash dependent from the eaves. The curio shops still contain things to charm the soul of the artist, though every day sees their treasures diminishing, to be replaced by modern imitations. The glorious jade that used to be obtainable is scarcely to be found, and the bronzes have mostly been carried off to the West; still one hopes for the best, and carries off a few things, which if not so old as they boast to be, have at least an air of antiquity and some noble suggestion of the glory of the art of the Ming dynasty.

Our first expedition at Moukden was naturally to the Foo Ling tombs to see where the great founder of the Manchu dynasty lies buried. It is disappointing to be unable to gain information as to the date of the tomb, but no doubt the Manchus adopted the architecture and arts of China at an early stage of their conquest.

[17]

It was by no means a promising morning when we set out, but our time was limited, and we had persuaded the doctor to take an unwonted holiday from his strenuous labours, so delay was impossible. Where no guide-books are obtainable, it is doubly valuable to have kind friends willing to place their knowledge at your disposal, and doctors are skilful at smoothing other things as well as pillows; in fact I can give no better advice to travellers than to try and secure the help of the medical missionary—the busier the better—as a guide to all that is best worth seeing in the foreign field. Dr. Young had kindly procured for us the requisite permit to visit the tombs, which can only be obtained through the British Consul. We set out in a weird glass chariot, quite suggestive of Cinderella’s coach; it had windows the whole way round, and was lined with mouse-coloured plush, not to mention a fine mirror opposite to us. We had a retainer standing on a step behind, who spent all his time jumping on and off, as he required to lead the horse round every corner and over every obstacle in the road. Passing outside the city we saw an endless stretch of graves beyond graves; then we came to a beautiful park-like place where lilies of the valley grow thickly in the spring—but alas! people are digging them up so ruthlessly, that it is to be feared there will soon be none left. The trees seemed to grow finer and finer as we neared the tombs. The wall surrounding them has been damaged by its occupation during the war, when the Japanese troops took[18] possession and were attacked by the Russians: the wall is riddled by bullets, but it is astonishing how comparatively little damage had been done. The gateway is beautifully decorated with green tiles, and there are handsome large green medallions set in the Venetian red wall. Inside is a fine avenue of hoary trees leading to the main avenue, in which are some curious stone animals; these are so familiar to us by photos and by the description of other travellers, that it is unnecessary for me to attempt it. They form but a detail of the fine effect which is created by the lofty buildings among the trees, enclosed within a high wall. The colouring of the building—mellowed by time—is superb, and as we saw it under the fast falling snow, was most impressive.

Some difficulty attended our entrance despite the permit, but the doctor’s tact overcame it, and once inside they were most civil to us, and became quite interested when I began to sketch. The actual grave of Noorhachu, or Taidsoo, the grandfather of the first Manchu Emperor of China (Ching dynasty 1644), is a lofty mound at the far end of the enclosure, and surrounded by a wall of its own. The entrance by which the ruling Emperor approaches the tomb is very fine, a handsomely carved marble pailow surrounded by trees, and as we looked at the whole group of buildings from the top of the wall, along which there is an excellent walk, they form a most impressive sight. The trees are full of mistletoe, but of a different species from ours; it has either yellow[19] or scarlet berries, and in some trees we saw both varieties.

There are many interesting monuments in Moukden, but I venture to think this is the finest of all. The design is copied from the Ming tombs near Peking, and it is said that it was originally planned to carry away the stone animals from the former in order to use them for the Moukden tombs. This design was frustrated, however, for a descendant of the Mings accidentally heard of it, whereupon he at once went and mutilated all the stone beasts, knocking off the ear of one and the beard from another, and thereby rendering them useless. While this explanation is merely a tradition, the fact remains. The Ming tombs, forty miles north of Peking, are designed on a much larger scale than the Moukden ones, and cover a distance of several miles in length, as compared with acres in the case of the latter. In my opinion this detracts considerably from the effect, as only one detail can be properly seen at a time; first the fine marble pailow of five gateways, then at varying distances other gateways (very dilapidated), then a square tower containing a stone tablet on a tortoise, then a dromos of stone animals and warriors facing one another, with a considerable space between each couple, so that the sixteen couples extend over a space nearly a mile in length. Between them and the tombs is a considerably greater distance, and whereas the above-mentioned memorials are all in a straight line, the thirteen tombs are arranged in a fan[20] shape at the base of the hills which enclose the end of the valley.

These Peking tombs date back to the time of the Ming dynasty, which ended in 1644, and the Moukden tombs are considerably later. Their whole design is taken direct from the former, and there is no attempt to introduce any Manchu characteristics. The reason for this is obvious; the Manchus were emerging from a state of barbarism, and possessed no architecture worthy of the name.

After the tombs the most interesting building at Moukden is the palace, for which also an order has to be obtained through the Consul. We visited it twice.

This palace is thoroughly Chinese in appearance (I failed to ascertain its date, but it is at least some centuries old), with its gorgeous golden roofs and Venetian red walls. The façades are decorated with coloured tiles of great beauty and infinite variety of detail: they challenge comparison with some of the majolica most highly prized in Europe. Under the wide eaves there are finely carved dragons, stretching their sinuous length from end to end. The buildings are ranged court beyond court, with a fine staircase leading to the innermost one at the back. But the main object of the visitor is to see the priceless treasures locked up in its rooms, for they contain the most valuable possessions of the Chinese throne. Unfortunately, when admittance has been obtained, it is not easy to see the treasures, for they are carefully wrapped up in cases, or stacked in hopeless confusion in cupboards,[21] and are taken out one by one and laid on a table for the visitor to see them, and then put away again. First we were shown imperial robes, studded with pearls and jewels, then jade-mounted swords. Jade is considered by the Chinese to be the most precious of all stones, and it is one of the hardest to cut. “It was first brought to England from Spanish America by Sir Walter Raleigh,” says Bushnell (“Chinese Art,” p. 134), and he derived the word “jade” from the Spanish piedra de hijade—“stone of the loins.” Vessels of jade are always used in the Chinese Imperial ritual worship, and must be of various colours, according to the particular ceremonial in which they are employed.

After showing us these things the officials began to lose their distrust, and invited us to come inside the enclosure and peer into the dark cupboards, whence we picked out things that looked particularly attractive, but found that the waning light prevented our doing justice to the opportunity.

It was on our second visit that we were shown the much more valuable collection of bronzes and porcelain, the door to which could only be unlocked after prolonged effort, and in the presence of special officials. Other visitors besides ourselves were anxious to enter, but a special permit was required, and they were sent away disappointed. The porcelain was piled in endless heaps in glass cases, which probably remained unopened for decades, and there was no attempt at classification. The beauty of colour and design could be[22] but imperfectly realised, as sets of bowls or dishes were all piled in one another, so as to occupy the least possible space, and there was but little variety in proportion to the large quantity of china displayed. A visit to the British Museum gives a much better conception of this form of Chinese art. It was much the same case with the bronzes, and it was even more difficult to see them than the china. There was one fine example of the “gold splash,” which is so well represented at the South Kensington Museum in Mr. Behren’s collection. To my great disappointment there was little variety of design. It is to be hoped that the Chinese may be sufficiently imbued by the modern spirit to make them copy (to a certain extent) the arrangement of our museums, so that the art treasures contained in the palace may be more accessible to visitors. Outside the palace were the curious fences known as “deer’s horns,” which are also to be seen at the great tombs and outside official buildings. They are long pieces of wood set at right angles to one another as closely as possible, and running through a long heavy beam. The lower ends of the cross pieces are heavy, and are set into the ground, the upper ones taper to a point: altogether the “deer’s horns” form a strong, though simple, barrier. They are usually painted red.

After seeing the palace we visited the fine church, built by the native Christians after the destruction of the former one by the Boxers in 1800. It seats several hundred people, and has a native pastor. It may[23] interest readers to know that among the State papers found during the Russian occupation of Moukden was a description of the destruction of the property of the Christians. This was written in Manchu, which is quite different from Chinese writing, and bound in imperial yellow silk, enclosed in a yellow silk box and sent to Peking. There it was countersigned by the late Emperor and late Dowager Empress, and sent back to Moukden to be placed in the State archives. Could any more conclusive proof be found that the Boxer outrages were sanctioned by the Court at Peking? We were privileged to see this interesting historical document.

At the time of the Boxers all the missionaries in Manchuria were obliged to flee, some without time to take even necessary clothing with them. One of the most popular doctors learnt afterwards that the robbers in a certain village had planned to carry him off in order to save him from the Boxers! It is impossible to overestimate the influence of the medical missionary, and no mission field has been more favoured in this respect than Manchuria. The medical mission work was started at Moukden in 1882 by Dr. Christie, who has steadily built up the work there, and whose new hospital is the model for what such institutions should be. Despite the prejudices of the people, the work has steadily grown. The renown of the foreign doctor has spread for hundreds of miles, and the message which is nearest to his heart has been carried into remote villages in the Long White Mountains by[24] patients who return from the hospital not only cured, but also imbued with the missionary spirit which has brought a new life to them. The respect which is felt for this work is shown in no way more clearly than in the fact that when the hospital was obliged to be left for ten months during the war between China and Japan, the buildings with their contents were left absolutely unharmed.

Not so fortunate, however, was the hospital during the Boxer time, for all the buildings were destroyed by fire, and when they might have been rebuilt, another desolating war swept over the country. The missionaries had returned and had their hands more than full, for Moukden was the refuge to which crowds of destitute Chinese were driven. No less than seventeen refuges, containing some 10,000 people, were under the care of the missionaries, for the officials thankfully recognised their efforts and cooperated with them, doing similar work themselves. There were as many as four hospitals being carried on at the same time, for not only were there numbers of wounded, but epidemics of smallpox and fever spread among the refugees.

When at last the time came for building the new hospital, the money granted as an indemnity for the destruction of the former ones by the Boxers was wholly inadequate, for the price of everything was more than quadrupled. The Chinese were not slow to show their sense of indebtedness for the unstinted labours on their behalf, and the new buildings, owing[25] to their generosity, were built on a larger scale than before. The Japanese, too, came forward with most generous aid, in return for the work that had been done for their wounded during the war. Marshal Oyama sent a donation of about £100 for the Red Cross work, and ordered all the wood required for the buildings to be sent up by rail, free of charge, from Newchwang. This was of the greatest importance, as there was no seasoned wood to be obtained in Moukden, and it meant a saving of several hundred pounds. The Viceroy sent a gift of over £600, to which he added another £150 when he opened the new hospital. Another friend carted all the bricks and tiles; a director of the Chinese railway ordered all the requisite Portland cement and floor tiles to be brought up free of charge from Tang Shan to Hsin Muntun, and others helped in various ways. No wonder the hospital is such a splendid success, when it has such workers and such friends! It has several wings radiating out from a long central corridor, with a fine operating theatre at the end. There is an X-ray apparatus and other special furnishings.[3] There are outbuildings for students, &c., a laboratory and class-rooms, besides the preaching hall, where service goes on daily.

But what, it may be asked, is the staff for this large[26] work? The surprising answer is one man; only last year has a second been appointed, to give a part of his time to assisting Dr. Christie. He has, of course, trained Chinese assistants to help him in the work, and very efficient some of them are, and two Chinese hospital evangelists, who follow up the cases, but the bulk of the work falls on himself. What would our doctors at home think of having to perform ten operations in a day, after handing over nine minor ones to the assistants? But that was the case the day we visited the hospital. It accommodates 110 patients, and the beds do not lack occupants. The attendance of out-patients is frequently 200 or 300 per morning, so that the attendance for the year is very large, last year numbering over 26,000. After the recent visit of the Naval Commission returning from Europe, a request came for medical aid for 200 men with badly frost-bitten ears, as the soldiers are not allowed to wear ear-muffs when on parade. It is not etiquette to wear ear-muffs or spectacles when speaking to any one, and the curious custom is now coming into fashion of touching the glasses instead of removing them. The hospital is a free one, but poor as are many of the patients, few of the in-patients leave without giving an offering, and many out-patients do the same. Some of the beds are supported from home, and it only requires £5 per annum to support one.

It will be seen from these figures how requisite it is to have a larger staff, and to undertake (what is now[27] being planned) a training college for the Chinese. The late Viceroy promised a yearly sum of about £420 for this purpose, but as he has been replaced by an anti-foreign Viceroy, it was feared that his promise would not be ratified by his successor. Despite the further fact that the new buildings are not yet begun, when the matter was placed before him he promised to consider it, and shortly afterwards sent word that the sum had been duly placed in the bank to the credit of the mission. The college will be a union one of the Irish Presbyterians and the United Free Church of Scotland, and may draw students also from the Danish Lutheran stations, the only other missionary society working in Manchuria. As there are now some 40,000 Christians there will be no difficulty in finding students, though it will not be entirely confined to Christians.

The course will be a thorough one, extending over five years after the preliminary examination, and diplomas will be given. The estimated cost of the new buildings and equipment is £2500, and two houses for professors £1500. An excellent site has already been obtained through the generosity of the Chinese, which is close to the hospital.

I have described at some length the medical mission here, and yet have done scant justice to it; of the women’s work a word must also be said. There are two fully qualified women doctors, and their hospital, with accommodation for seventy patients, is so crowded, that a new wing is now being added. They do a[28] large amount of work in the people’s homes, as many of the ladies are not to be reached otherwise, also they do work as far as time allows in the district round Moukden. When it is known that the doctor is coming, patients crowd to see her; and one realises a little the magnitude of the work when one chances to see the missionary come back utterly worn out by a two days’ visitation, having interviewed over 900 patients in that short space of time.

Women’s work in Moukden is not merely medical, but also educational. Besides the training of Bible women there is an excellent girls’ boarding school, for which new buildings (badly needed) are in course of erection. Great excitement was caused in the little community by the girls being taken, for the first time in their lives, to see an exhibition. It is rather disappointing to the traveller who thinks he is going to the genuine Far East to find it invaded by industrial exhibitions and school excursions, but alas, such is the prosaic fact.

We devoted a day to visiting the imperial tombs on the north of the city, and although it was the end of March, we suffered intensely from the cold, and had not the advantage of going in a glass coach as we did on the occasion of visiting the eastern tombs. The road was too rough, and even the solid droshky built in Odessa, and drawn by two sturdy beasts, was severely tested by the frightful ruts into which we were frequently plunged. The Russian driver was a capital, good-tempered fellow, and never hesitated to[29] drive through a quagmire or up a bank into a ploughed field when necessity compelled. After three hours’ driving we approached a fine bluff crowned with pine-trees, among which gleamed the golden roofs of the tombs, so we knew that our destination was at hand.

“Deer’s horns” palisades enclosed the wood at the base of the cliff, and we turned up a gully to the left of it. The road soon became very steep, and we left the carriage to climb up on foot. The view of the entrance gate among the trees as seen in the accompanying sketch, was peculiarly striking after the long drive over the dun-coloured plain, for as yet there was no sign of spring. Passing through the gateway we soon came to the lofty façade of the main enclosure, and a surly old guardian of the place came to challenge our entry. We produced the permit, which we had obtained through the Consul, and were kept a long time waiting before we were allowed to enter, but there was plenty to interest us in the scene. It was a sort of square, with the dwellings of the officials on either side, and at the lower end a small temple facing the plain below, down to which were long flights of steps, and then a steep paved incline the same width as the steps and with balustrades at the sides. Lofty pine-trees surrounded the place, and scattered amongst them at the bottom were stone animals and figures. At a short distance from the steps was the State entrance gateway, but that was closed. One could imagine how fine the effect would be to see a gorgeous royal[30] procession enter the gateway from the plain, cross the short level space under the avenue of pine-trees, and mount the long ascent to the towering, golden-roofed temples behind which the imperial tomb stands. The colouring in the brilliant sunlight looked very rich as it gleamed among the dark pine-trees.

Before leaving, we asked the man who had showed us round if we could have some hot water for tea, but he said there was none, so we took our things outside, and sat down to sketch and lunch. At first I could not think what was the matter, for the paint seemed thoroughly intractable; then it suddenly dawned on me that no sooner was a wet wash laid on the paper than it froze. Yet this was the last week of March, and midday, with the sun shining full on us. Sketching generally seems to be done under difficulties, and this trip more so than ever. It will be understood how doubly welcome was the sight of our guide returning to say that he had got hot water for us, and he took away our teapot and filled it, for all Chinese understand the right making of tea. As we were drinking it shortly afterwards, a pitiable figure came creeping up the hill, evidently suffering acutely from asthma. When we offered him a cup of hot tea a look of intense gratitude shone in his eyes, and when he had drunk it, still speechless, he drew himself up and made a European military salute, then passed slowly on to the gateway.

As we returned to the city we agreed that no one should fail to visit the tombs who comes to Moukden.[31] It is of course tiresome to have to get permits, and takes a little time, but there is nothing within the city that is half so picturesque as these two groups of tombs, to each of which a whole day should be devoted. Some inscriptions at the Foo Ling tomb, we were told, are quite unique, but the heavy snow when we were there prevented our doing justice to the fine details of architecture.

There is an unpromising-looking hotel at Moukden called the Astor House, but Americans who stayed there assured us it was quite comfortable, and every one passing through Moukden ought certainly to stop and see it, especially in view of its being so rapidly modernised. The old temples seem to be in a state of utter disrepair, and the most interesting one, the Fox Temple, will soon cease to exist. The worship of the fox is very common in Manchuria, and is especially incumbent upon officials, all Mandarins being supposed to do it, as the fox is the keeper of the seals of office. Doolittle, in his “Social Life of the Chinese,” says: “There is in connection with some of the principal civil yamens a small two-storied building devoted to the worship of his Majesty, Master Reynard. There is no image or picture of a fox to be worshipped, but simply an imaginary fox somewhere. Incense, candles, and wine are placed upon a table in the room of the second storey of this building, and before this table the Mandarin kneels down and bows his head in the customary manner, as an act of reverence to Reynard, the keeper of his seals of office. This[32] sacrifice, it is affirmed, is never performed by deputy. The Chinese believe the official seal of the Mandarin, after he has arrived at his yamen, to be in the keeping of the fox. They assert with great earnestness, and apparent sincerity, that if the Mandarin did not worship the fox on his arrival at his residence, his seal of office would shortly disappear in some inexplicable way, or some singular and strange calamity would certainly befall him or his yamen.”

We visited the Temple of Hell, where all sorts of horrible penalties are vividly depicted in stucco, and these are more terrible as indicating what Chinese punishments have been, than in suggesting what may be expected in the future world. The temples seem to be little frequented by the people, and it is only on certain occasions that the people flock to them. The ancestral tablets in his own home have the main part of a Chinaman’s devotions.

On our second visit to Moukden we had rather a rickety droshky, and were amused to see the way the driver arranged the luggage. The Chinese never make any difficulty about the quantity, for fear by so doing of losing a fare. The man therefore entirely filled his footboard with luggage, and seated himself on it with a large bag of bedding on his lap. We had not gone far when a wheel rolled off into the gutter, and we waited some time for it to be put on again, the luggage meanwhile being deposited in the road. The job was not satisfactorily managed, for we had to go very, very slowly, and have the wheel continually hammered on.[33] It began to rain, and in order to put up the hood most of the luggage had to be piled on the top of ourselves, and we found it, to say the least, both hot and heavy. At last our driver gave up in despair, and by means of signs made us understand that he would go and fetch another vehicle. When he returned with a cart the transfer was soon made, and our driver with great secrecy explained that he had bargained with the carter to take us to our destination for a certain sum. The difficulty then arose as to how we were to pay him, for we only possessed Japanese and Pekingese money, which he eyed with distrust, and declined to accept. We gave him, however, a rather liberal fare, and pointed to him to take it to a big shop, opposite which we were standing. There he was reassured as to its value, and came back smiling; he thrust his head into the cart with a final rejoinder to us only to pay the right fare to the carter, evidently feeling that we were liable to spend our money too lavishly.

From Moukden we made a flying visit to Peking and into Shansi, but as that does not come within the scope of this book, I shall take up my narrative from the point where we re-entered Manchuria on our return by the South Manchurian Railway. We were astonished to see the hundreds of emigrants going north: every train was packed with them. There was an accident on the line, a young lad of twenty having his leg badly crushed by the train preceding ours. First aid was rendered by the officials, who are trained to give it, and by means of a chunk of coal and some cord the bleeding was stopped, the ligature being so tight as completely to stop the circulation. The lad was put on a big sort of door and placed in the luggage van of our train, and the conductor came round as soon as we had started again to see if a doctor was aboard to give further aid. Our party provided one, and there were all necessary requisites in the shape of bandages, splints, permanganate of potash, &c., in the surgery at the junction farther up the line, so that the patient was made as comfortable as possible when he arrived there, and a message[35] was telegraphed to the medical mission at Hsin Muntun, which happened to be both his and also our destination. On arrival the doctor and assistants were waiting, and the young man was carried away at once to the hospital. Amputation was necessary, but the lad would not at first agree to it; however, just as we had finished dinner a message came to say that his friends had been summoned, and that both they and he were willing for the operation to take place, so no time was lost in performing it.

Next morning we visited him in the hospital, and found him looking quite comfortable, and not at all pale even.

In the early days of the railway there were countless accidents; people would drop things on to the line, and then creep under the train to pick them out, or step in front of it just as it was starting. We were surprised to find blue glass windows in many of the trains, but the explanation of that was, that being unaccustomed to glass, people were continually putting their heads through them as long as they were uncoloured! Even now the trains all approach and leave the stations extraordinarily slowly, and there is a great bell ringing in order to warn people off the line. Of course there are no overhead or underground passages for crossing the line, so that it makes accidents almost inevitable. They are taken with the usual Chinese stolid imperturbability.

Hsin Muntun is an interesting little town not far distant from Moukden, which we visited in order to[36] see the admirable mission work carried on there by members of the Irish Presbyterian Mission, having received a cordial invitation from one of the staff whom we happened to meet on the railway as we travelled south. The Irish and Scotch Presbyterians may be said to have federated in Manchuria, and work together with hearty goodwill. Though Hsin Muntun offered no striking characteristics, I had the good fortune to make sketches of the women there, with their curious head-dress, similar to that worn throughout the country.

In the women’s hospital were two widows, acting as assistants; they donned their best garments for my benefit, and may be seen in the accompanying sketch, saluting one another in the Manchu style. The Manchus always wear the hair dressed over a metal framework, either as in the sketch, or like a wide flat bow, and with both styles of head-dress a large bunch of artificial flowers is worn, and gold ornaments in addition. In winter a cap is worn out of doors, with fur round it, and embroidered strings hanging down behind, not to mention ear-muffs, an imperative necessity where the cold is so intense. We found that in the women’s hospital they decided to have the bulk of the accommodation in the shape of heated khangs, as in the homes of the people; these are brick platforms, used instead of bedsteads: they are greatly preferred by the patients. It may not be so sanitary, but the people feel much more at home on the khang, and as physical health is not the main object of medical mission work,[37] it is obvious that due regard must be paid to the likings or prejudices of the people among whom the missionary is working. The cost of medical mission work is heavy, and we were touched by the efforts to utilise to the utmost the money which had been sent from home for the buildings. The funds had not been sufficient to provide for a porch or front door, so a mat shed had been erected till the requisite money should be forthcoming. Efficiency does not depend on these things, but workers would be much encouraged if their supporters were more numerous, or more generous.

The men’s hospital is larger, and is complete—very simple, but thoroughly practical, and attracting patients from all the country round. Our visit took place at rather a slack time of year, and it was undergoing a New Year’s cleaning, as that is the occasion when all patients, if possible, return to their own homes. After visiting both the men’s and the women’s hospitals we went to the girls’ school, and met with a great surprise. Three years ago the school was not in existence, and when the children first came, mostly from Christian homes in neighbouring villages, they were absolutely ignorant of reading and writing. Now we saw them examined in geography, arithmetic, algebra, singing, and drilling. There are about fifty boarders: they are under the charge of a Chinese matron, with four senior girls as monitors to help her. These girls were examined last term along with the boys, who had been studying many years.[38] The best girl pupil obtained an average of 84 per cent. marks, coming out ahead of the boys in arithmetic, Scripture, and algebra. She got 100 per cent. for arithmetic, 95 for an essay, 96 for Chinese classics (memorised), and 85 for explaining the Chinese classics. The children’s sums were as neat and the figures as well written as one could wish to see, their maps excellent, and they answered the questions in geography on all parts of the world, pointing out the places on the charts on the wall. I am forced to admit that the examination in geography was more painful to us than to the examined, for we were required, without book or map, to ask questions on Australasia and South America, parts of the world with which I was sadly unfamiliar. We happened to go back into the schoolroom after school had been dismissed, and found a child who had not been able to point out on the map the way from Shanghai to England now receiving a lesson on it from the monitor. The Irish master told us the girls are “tigers” for work, and far keener than the boys, to whom education has always been open. We went into the courtyard to watch them drill, and here again we were struck with the success of the monitress, who had learnt the exercises from a book, with merely an explanation from the foreign teacher when she failed to understand it. The singing is entirely taught on the sol-fa system, and the children have already learnt to sing creditably simple part music. They are nearly all Chinese, but apparently there is little appreciable[39] difference between the intellectual ability of Chinese and Manchus. Morning school closed with two or three short prayers by the girls, and the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer: they always dismiss themselves. The education is free, but the children’s food is provided by the parents: they looked thoroughly well and happy, and comparatively clean, and none are allowed to have bound feet. They have a large measure of freedom, except that they are not allowed outside the large compound. The money for the building came in a way as unexpected as welcome. The missionary received word that an official desired him to come to the railway station to see him on his way through Hsin Muntun, and when they met, the official presented him with a cheque for 3000 taels in aid of the excellent educational work that he was doing. This enabled him to start building the girls’ school, of which he had to be not only the founder, but also the architect. In the same way the doctor had to design his house and hospitals, and superintend the building of them; no doubt the labour is far greater for a man without architectural training; otherwise the buildings seem to be quite as well done as the majority of houses, and at considerably smaller cost.

Leaving Hsin Muntun we started for Moukden, where the Chinese stationmaster had been asked to give us assistance in changing stations, so that we might not miss the train. He spoke a little English, and sent a man with us to look after our luggage in one cart, while we went in another. The road was[40] indescribable, for a thaw had set in, and oceans of mud added to the horrors of the way, emitting a stench which had lost nothing by six months’ frost. We were flung to and fro in the cart, and it seemed an endless drive. On arrival we rejoiced to see that the clock had not yet struck, though it was just approaching the hour for the train to start. As this was the Japanese line (the one which extends from Dalny to Kwan Chengtze), we had to get our money changed into Japanese yen before we could buy tickets, and were then told there was no train for three and a half hours. As our friends had sent to the station at Hsin Muntun to inquire, and been told that this train was running, we felt rather provoked, but found the explanation in the fact that it only ran three times a week, and this was not the right day. A pleasant little fellow took us to a comfortable waiting-room, and fetched us a kettle of hot water to make tea, but no sooner had we done this than another official came and turned us out in order to prepare a meal for a Japanese family, and we had to retire to a miserable little office. The Japanese line is well managed and clean: the Chinese attendant comes round at intervals with his feather brush, and is ready to provide you with hot water whenever you want it, and comes to brush you down before you leave the train. We were thankful to betake ourselves to the train as soon as it came in, although there was still an hour before it was due to start for Liao Yang. The journey is only thirty miles, but the ordinary trains take nearly three hours, and[41] one finds it rather slow and monotonous. When one thinks, however, of the pre-railway days, when you might not infrequently take the same length of time to do three miles, thanks to the ocean of mud which constitutes a road as soon as the spring thaw sets in, ten miles an hour seems wild speed.

Liao Yang was the ancient capital of the Liao Tong province of Southern Manchuria, and it is the most beautiful of Manchurian cities, for within the walls are orchards of plum, cherry, apricot, and pear, which look radiantly lovely against the sombre background of the walls. Originally it was not Manchu but Chinese, as I have pointed out on page 15. The Manchus tried to gain possession of it, but, failing in the attempt, they built a city for themselves on the other side of the river, which is called the New Liao Yang. In addition to the four usual gateways into the city—north, south, east, and west—there is one which is quite different in appearance, called the Korean Gate, through which the Korean envoys used to pass when bringing tribute. Through it there is a lovely view on to the river, with low-lying hills in the distance: the sketch is looking not out of the city, but inwards. Just within the gate is a dusty sort of waste place at the foot of the wall, frequented by scavenger dogs, and you may see, as we did, a wisp of straw in which a dead baby has been wrapped and cast out, for the Chinese do[43] not bury them, in the hopes that the ill-luck caused by the death of the child may be averted.[4] To this day the cart may be seen going round Peking to collect the little corpses, just like a scavenger’s cart.

Just outside the Korean Gate we saw a cadet corps marching along in good style, with drums beating, and creating just as much interest as a similar one does at home. These city walls were in existence before the Manchu dynasty came (in 1644), and yet the bricks look as new in most parts as if they had just been built, and it is only where the Russians made breaches in them that they are at all ruinous; we found this to our cost when we wanted to climb down them after seeing the view. The dust had accumulated somewhat on the outer side, so we climbed up with comparatively little difficulty, and were well rewarded by the glorious panorama illuminated by the rays of the setting sun. The Liao River runs just outside the east wall, and the fields and distant hills wore the lovely golden colour of an Egyptian scene. Just below us the ferry-boat was conveying passengers, carts, mules, cows, donkeys, &c., from one shore to the other, and we watched a carter first getting his cart up the steep bank and then returning[44] to carry his fare, an old lady, up the bank on his back. A recalcitrant cow had to be hauled aboard by a cord tied to its front leg and by its bridle, but most of the animals seemed quite accustomed to the job. After watching them awhile we turned southward to where a range of hills bounded the horizon, ending with a peak loftier than the rest, and known by the Japanese as “Kuropatkin’s eye.” This ridge was held by the Russians during the war, and for six months previous to the battle of Liao Yang they were busy making defences between the hills and the city. The trenches and barbed wire entanglements were admirably executed, and it cost seven days of hard fighting before the Japanese were able to enter the city. Point after point was taken and retaken; the Russian ranks were mowed down like standing corn, and the Japanese displayed an equal courage, so that during those seven days the loss of the two armies was reckoned at 25,000 men left dead on the field. The Japanese general sat in a temple some miles away from the scene of action, directing the operations, but with the information coming steadily in from all points by telephone. He had pushed forward, leaving no means of retreat, and by the end of the battle he was at the end of his resources, victorious, but unable to follow up the victory. In England few people realised the tremendous struggle that was going on, and the magnificent prowess of the two nations. The Russian soldier mournfully asked, “Why do we come out here to fight?” but he fought valiantly[45] all the same. Eighteen months ago Kitchener sent a party of forty young officers from India to visit these battlefields, with Japanese lecturers to instruct them daily, while they sat taking notes on the hill-sides overlooking the plain. There was always one Japanese soldier present, who had taken part in the action, to describe his own personal experiences, which must have added a vivid touch to the technical details. The Japanese travelled lightly, and, fortunately for them, the standing crops rendered cavalry practically useless. The principal crop is millet, which grows fifteen feet in height, and the Russians crushed it down by means of improvised rollers drawn by horses. In the Japanese army everything is utilised, and is as compact as possible. A general was seen lost in study one day, and he explained that he had found a use for the little boxes in which the rations were carried and for the paper in them, but he could not think what to do with the string! During a plague of rats in the north the Japanese all provided themselves with ear-muffs, which they manufactured out of the rat skins.

One of the interesting sights at Liao Yang is the Fox Temple, which stands on a little hill, and is reached by a fine flight of steps. The worship of the fox is a purely indigenous form of worship in China; but it is mixed up with the other religions, and fox shrines may be seen in Buddhist or Taoist temples.

In the principal building was a Buddha, before which worshippers were offering cakes and incense,[46] and there was also a large bag of paper money on the altar. In an adjoining shrine were three large figures of the fox family, dressed as officials, with literary badges on the front of their robes. The old priest came in to remove some of the offerings for his midday meal, and on inquiry said he had often seen the fox come in, and that it was white. In one of the side doors is a hole, just like those to be seen for cats in old French castles, through which the fox is supposed to enter.

As we returned from the walls we watched a man flying a wonderful centipede kite, some sixty feet in length. The head was that of a dragon, with wide open jaws, and a red tongue; its eyes rotated in their sockets with a whirring sound, and it was painted gold, and pink, and blue. The sections of the body were round discs of green and pink paper on a light bamboo framework, with a stick about four feet long protruding on each side, and a tuft of feathers at the ends to represent the legs of the beast. This kite is a graceful object serpentining in the sky, and when at a considerable height, a messenger kite was sent up to it, which discharged a shower of crackers (?) on its arrival and then sped swiftly down the string again, having accomplished its errand. These kites sometimes require as many as six men to hold them, and a very strong cord is necessary.

Passing along the street we came to an interesting medicine stall, where four bears’ paws and some stags’ antlers were the most prominent goods. The latter[47] are in great request when they are in velvet, and hunters dig pits for the deer in the eastern mountains of Manchuria. Sometimes the hunter is robbed of his prey by the wily bear, who finds the antlers a tasty morsel, and gnaws them off before the hunter comes round to visit the pit. As medicine the antlers are dried and ground into powder. Other medicines on the stall were eagles’ claws, deers’ hoofs, and dried centipedes, about four inches long, attached to bits of bamboo. We bought one of these, and inquired what disease it is used for; “wind in the stomach,” was the reply.

All diseases in China seem to have their root in an evil temper, and it is not uncommon for patients so afflicted to come for medicinal treatment to the dispensary. The prescription of one of the lady doctors is as follows: “Go into a room alone, take a mouthful of mixture (a nice pleasant one), and hold it in the mouth twenty minutes before swallowing.” This remedy has excellent effects, and may be used in England with equal efficacy.

We were so charmed with the city of Liao Yang, that it required small persuasion to induce us to return there a month later in order to visit the neighbouring mountains of Chang Shan (a thousand peaks), and I shall let the account of it follow the present chapter. It was the last week in April, and all the fruit-trees and the elms were bursting into blossom and leaf, as we walked from the station outside the gate to the mission premises within it, embowered among orchards, and[48] the scent of lilac filling the air. The mission gardens were beginning to show signs of the loveliness which has won them a well-deserved reputation among travellers, and we returned like old friends to our former quarters. Life on the mission field soon cements friendship, and medical mission work must appeal even to the stubbornest heart. We had already visited the two hospitals, models of practical, unostentatious usefulness, with the excellent native staff trained by Dr. Westwater, whose name is a household word in the land. To him was due the fact that the town was saved from the horrors of bombardment by the Russian troops, and one has but to walk through the streets of Liao Yang with him to see how universal is the respect in which he is held.

There are various temples of different religions in Liao Yang, and we visited the Temple of Hell, where are depicted all the horrors of future punishment, than which nothing could be more ghastly than the Chinese conception. The grotesqueness of their realistic execution in coloured plaster fortunately took away some of the gruesomeness, and in one of the side shrines we found the extraordinary figure of the popular deity, called the “Ten Parts Imperfect One.” The sketch in Chapter XII. hardly does justice to the hideousness of the figure, which represents the main woes to which flesh is heir in China—lameness, blindness, dropsy, harelip, boils, &c. &c., and to this deity the people come to pray in all cases of sickness.

We also visited a picturesque Buddhist shrine,[49] where an old blind nun lives, the owner of much property, and of the orchards adjacent to the mission property. We found her seated on the khang immediately behind the figure of the Buddha, where she has spent many, many years in meditation. She welcomed us with cordiality, and made us sit down beside her, while she entered into a long and intimate conversation with our host, whom she had not met for some years. The nun had a remarkable head, closely shaven, of course, under her black cap, and looked more like a man than a woman. She told us that she became blind when she was only six years old, and now she was seventy-nine. She felt our hands with the subtle, searching touch of the blind, and had not a little to say on them; we much regretted our ignorance of Chinese, as our feminine curiosity to know what she said was left ungratified. The conversation then turned on the great problems of life, both this life and the next, but she seemed entirely ignorant of Buddhist philosophy, and took refuge in futile platitudes; as regards the future she said, “We die, and there is nothing more.” It is disappointing to find how utterly ignorant they are of anything beyond the externals of their religion. The Taoist monks, on the contrary, boast many men of learning, and have more conception of real religion. I understand this is also the case in other parts of the Chinese Empire.

In contrast with the various temples nothing more charming could be found than the simple beauty of[50] the mission church. It is always difficult to arrange for parts of a building to be screened off without spoiling the effect of it as a whole; at the present time this is still considered necessary in China, so that the men and women may be separated from one another, also they have separate entrances. In the Liao Yang church the difficulty was ingeniously conquered by making the transept the women’s part, and diminishing the space of the nave where it joins the transept, by erecting a smaller arch on either side containing a screen. The pulpit, being in the centre, commands the whole building. This church was designed by an architect specially sent out by the mission committee, and it is of no small importance that such buildings should be carefully designed to be in harmony with the architecture of the country, and not to seem European. At the great World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh, stress was laid by speakers from all lands on the growing desire of native Christians to have their own national churches. To this end every detail must be studied; not only must religion be taught them in their own language, but the churches in which they worship must have a homelike feeling, so that nothing may suggest to them that Christianity is a foreign religion. When all is said and done it came from the East and not from the West, so that its externals at least should have as little Western colouring as possible.

Next morning we made an early start for the Changsha Valley, in which is an interesting group of monasteries, both Taoist and Buddhist. The former do not admit women visitors, but the latter do. The carts containing our luggage and bedding had started about 3 A.M., as we were to do the first few miles by rail across a monotonous plain. There was only a goods train at that early hour, 7.25, but one car is attached to it for passengers, and in this we travelled for nearly an hour. It contains but one small seat at each end, occupied by Japanese and guards, so the rest of the company mainly squatted on the floor. Some had nice skin rugs or parcels on which to sit, and looked eminently comfortable, but we had to make the best of narrow window ledges, and were glad enough to reach the roadside station where we got out. There was a little waiting-room in which we sat, as the cart had not yet arrived, but thanks to the care of a charming hospital assistant, who came to look after us from Liao Yang, we were promptly invited into the booking-office, where several smart Japanese officials were seated round a stove, and[52] European chairs were given to us. A bullfinch was piping cheerfully in a corner, and they brought us tea to beguile the time. In about half-an-hour the carts turned up, but our hearts sank at the thought that they had required four hours to do considerably less than half the journey. We were soon packed into the carts, each with our bedding and various odds and ends. We promptly became aware that the more padding we had the better, as the jolts of the carts grew worse as time went on. For three hours we crossed the plain and then halted for lunch. This was our first experience of a Manchurian inn, which certainly falls far short of Chinese inns. The kitchen and guest-room are always combined, the khang running along each side of the room, and the fires are at one end of it, at right angles to the khangs. We were installed comfortably on one side of the room, and enjoyed a discreet investigation by the other guests and villagers from the other side of the room. Dr. Westwater’s excellent servant acted as vigilant guardian, and made us quite break the tenth commandment before the end of our excursion. It took nearly another two hours before we came to the mouth of the valley, where the monasteries lay, and the dull monotony of the plain gave way to a ravishing scene of craggy and abrupt hills clothed with vegetation.

The wild flowers were beginning to come out, purple anemones, white violets, &c., but nothing like the wealth of the woods we had just left in Korea. The monasteries were pitched aloft in inaccessible-looking[53] spots, terrace above terrace. When we reached the gorge where we were to stay, it looked well-nigh impossible for the carts to make the ascent. At the entrance gate they halted, and a group of men came forward to help push them up over the rocks. Each cart had two mules, and they pulled with right goodwill, so that in a few minutes of pushing, pulling, and shouting, the carts had been rushed up through the second gateway on to the platform where they were to be housed. Much disappointment was shown by the monks at the non-appearance of our friend the doctor, who was evidently a favourite here as everywhere, but heavy work at the hospital and other reasons had prevented his accompanying us. Up and up the rock-cut steps we climbed to the guest-room, which had been bespoken for our use, and a more attractive spot it would have been impossible to find. Far below the mountain torrent murmured, and wild pigeons and kites added their notes to the music of the brook. I sat down to sketch shortly after our arrival, and the scene was precisely the one to charm a Chinese artist of the old school. I found myself insensibly imitating the reproductions I possess of work done by noted artists of three hundred years ago. A tiny bright green bird perched on a tree close by, and soon the gong began to sound for evening worship. A few monks made their way up the flights of steps to where a faint glimmer of light showed from within the main temple, bowing and kneeling at intervals on the way. Evening settled down and we repaired to our cell,[54] thinking of the lovely rose-coloured dawn when I would paint the scene. Alas! next morning showed a leaden sky, and by the time we had finished breakfast large snowflakes came floating down. The scene melted away before our eyes, and soon the ground was white with snow, and the weather showed no signs of clearing. The disappointment was a bitter one; our one day, our only opportunity gone, and the long cold hours of the day without any occupation to fill them. Fidus Achates brought us a charcoal brazier, but it was poor comfort. After lunch, however, the clouds broke and the snow ceased falling, so we went out to prospect. We were guided by our servant Jim down the gorge and up another, where we came to a long flight of steps leading up to a small Taoist temple, with beautiful wooden carvings round the shrines, and a thoroughly picturesque little courtyard with various plants in it, and brass ornaments brilliantly polished. Altogether it formed a charming picture, and had all the appearance of being carefully tended. A curious sundial and various ornamental tablets were arranged in the court, and there were also the conventional pair of trees on either side of the steps leading to the principal shrine. The sun began to shine fitfully, and the snow to melt from sunny spots, so we hastened back to sketch.

Scarcely were we settled when the gorge began to resound with periodic whistle calls, and then we saw men in a kind of blue uniform, and each with a scarlet blanket slung across one shoulder, beginning to ascend the temple steps. They continued to arrive[55] till the whole place was swarming with them, and finally we saw our little platform invaded. It seemed time to interfere, so my friend went back and told our servant we could not possibly have them established in our outer room, which was already full of their things, and strewn with orange peel; for the time being remonstrance was effectual, but after a short evacuation they returned and took fresh possession. I then went to the charge and told Jim to send them away. He went instead to fetch an official in European tourist’s dress, with field-glasses slung over his shoulder, and to my surprise he spoke excellent English. He explained that this was a party of one hundred students from a commercial college at New Chwang who had come for an excursion, and were going to spend three days here. I pointed out that these rooms had been engaged for us before we came, and that it was impossible for us to have people filling the outer one, our only means of exit. He asked if we should object to having a party of little boys in it, and we said we certainly did object, and that for this night they must sleep elsewhere. He promised to arrange it so, and all their things were taken away, leaving us in peace and content. Alas! it was only for an hour; then he returned to say that they had sent to try and find accommodation in another monastery but in vain; that the carts had arrived bringing the little boys who were very tired, and he begged they might have our outer room, promising they should be quite quiet. We were compelled to give in, though sorely against[56] our will, as the next day we were starting on a long journey to Kharbin, not to mention the fatiguing six hours’ cart journey. I must admit that the boys behaved perfectly: they came in like mice, and were sound asleep before we knew they had arrived: only gentle snores proclaimed their presence. In the morning they were up and out by 5.30 in perfect silence. As we started at 6 o’clock we could only admire the excellent discipline and good manners which they displayed, and almost regret that we had not seen more of them.

It was a lovely morning, and we were sorry to quit the peaceful valley, the more so as we emerged into a raging dust-storm on the plain. Our return journey was much more rapid than the previous one, and we reached the station one and a half hours before the train started. The tiny waiting-room was already crowded, and the atmosphere dense, for the people have the vaguest conception of time, and are accustomed to wait hours at the station. We had no longer our previous escort to find us more comfortable accommodation, so we had to exercise patience. The bookstall does not yet form part of the equipment of a Chinese railway station; we were reduced to the study of humanity. We returned to Liao Yang for the third and last time, and found the same kind welcome and sense of home-coming which is familiar to all visitors at Liao Yang. We were told that the good monks at Changsha had refused to take any remuneration for our accommodation, but had sent[57] word to the doctor that it was time to think of it when he came again. Perhaps that was a gentle hint for him to come soon, but it was a different experience from the one we had in the Buddhist monastery that we visited in Korea.

A few hours later we took the bi-weekly express train for the north, and reached Kharbin in about eighteen hours.

I must now take my narrative back to the time after our first visit to Liao Yang when we returned to Moukden, as the base from which to go to Korea. In the map at the end of the volume it will be seen that the single line from the north to Moukden is replaced by three lines spreading out fan shape, one to Korea, one to Dalny (both of these are Japanese), and one to Tientsin, which is Chinese.

We left Moukden at 8 A.M. by the ordinary Japanese train, but the permanent line to Antung is only completed for a short distance. In our carriage there was a framed notice in Japanese, of which there was apparently an abbreviated form in English below, which ran, “Hands off the rope, please.” No rope or check-string was visible, so the order was rather a dead letter. After travelling two and a half hours we had to change to the light railway on which are no first-class carriages. The accommodation was limited in every way, and the narrow benches made us long for the “cushioned seats” which Maggie’s brothers found so reposeful in “What every woman knows.” Despite the beauty of the scenery the way seemed long: hour after hour passed by, while still we crept up the mountain gorges. The Manchurian side showed little vegetation on the crags, except some stunted pine-trees. On all the Japanese lines we were struck with the large number of soldiers hanging about. The Chinese Government granted permission for one soldier to every ten miles of railway; but there are[59] 15,000 men to 703 miles of railway, according to Mr. Tyenaga’s reckoning in an article entitled “Manchuria’s Strategic Railway.” They are quartered in various places. Yet Japan notified to the Powers the withdrawal of her troops from Manchuria only a few months ago! At midday we made a short halt, and the Japanese officers had tea served to them, and produced their “luncheon baskets.” These consisted of three neat little trays, a paper serviette, and chopsticks: the top tray was filled with rice, the next with a vegetable salad, and the third with rissoles, fish, and other savouries. Another Japanese passenger produced from his sleeve a toothpick, knife, fruit, &c. It was a continual source of interest to us to see what came out of that receptacle—note-book, pencil, handkerchief, cigarettes, matches, a veritable box of tricks; finally he selected a lump of coal from a truck attached to the rear of the carriage, wrapped it in paper, and added it to the other treasures up his sleeve, or perhaps it would be more correct to say down his sleeve, for it formed a sort of pouch. He was an interesting specimen of the indeterminate Jap, so common in Manchuria; his clothes, the first day of the journey, were a mixture of European, Chinese, and Japanese, but next day he appeared in a sort of European clerical black suit and white shirt, a costume which was by no means adapted to his mode of sitting. He took off his elastic-sided boots, climbed on to the narrow seat on which he had previously placed a folded blanket, gathered his clothing carefully together,[60] and sat down cross-legged. If it had not been for the large felt wideawake hat which rested on his ears, he would have looked, with his folded arms, like some contemplative Buddha. Much of the time he spent in sleep, but every now and then he woke up, and at once set to work with feverish energy, writing rapidly in his note-book.

As we zig-zagged up the mountain the air grew colder and denser, for our carriage was full, and every one smoked but ourselves. We managed to light the stove with the remains of the luncheon boxes, and fortunately there was a scuttle of coal with which to replenish it. The main drawback was the difficulty of escaping being burnt owing to the narrow space, and one’s dress paid with a couple of holes.

At 7.40 P.M. the train stopped for the night, and we betook ourselves to a Japanese inn tinctured with Europeanism. It consisted of a squat tower with ten sides, of which the centre, also ten-sided, formed the parlour. Each of these inner walls formed a door, seven of which opened into bedrooms. As they were all alike, no one seemed able to remember which was his room, so we had to barricade our door if we wanted to exclude visitors. The other guests were led off in turns to have a bath, and returned in due course arrayed in hotel dressing-gowns and slippers to sit before the stove and smoke. Next morning we started again at 8 o’clock, and spent a similar day to the previous one, climbing through mountain gorges and crossing and recrossing the same[61] river. The hill-sides boasted more vegetation, and the brown autumn leaves still clung to the trees, of which a number are wild mulberry, which grows freely in these mountains. We reached Antung soon after 6 o’clock, and went to a Japanese inn, recommended by the proprietor of the one where we had spent the previous night: he telegraphed to them to meet us at the station. Antung is a considerable place, and the Japanese town is situated quite apart from the Chinese; the railway and ferry were near the hotel, and we started betimes for the latter, which runs in connection with the train at Wiju on the south bank of the Yalu River. We took our tickets, but they possessed literally no change at the ticket-office. I was able to pay almost the correct sum, only three farthings in excess of the full price, and the man offered to give me the change later on. It did not seem worth while struggling through a dirty crowd for this magnificent sum afterwards, so I did not return, but an hour later, when we were seated in the train at Wiju, an official solemnly presented the three farthings to me!

The river was full of ominous-looking blocks of ice, and the tug looked sadly unequal to making its way through it: in fact it had missed running on that account more than one day the same week, so we thought ourselves fortunate in getting across the river at once. There is often considerable delay, both at the time of the freezing and of the thawing of the river, and unfortunately there is[62] no bridge of any kind. The permanent line will necessitate the building of a bridge, but it is not expected to be ready within the next two years, though the Japanese are straining every nerve to complete the line. The tug was wretchedly small and crowded, but performed its journey valiantly, crunching through the ice, and landing us in about a quarter of an hour on the Korean bank of the Yalu, where a well-appointed train awaited us. Never was a first-class carriage more welcome to weary travellers, never was an excellently cooked lunch which was served in due course more highly appreciated, and the attendant gave the finishing touch to our contentment by administering a much-needed brush down before our arrival at Pyöng Yang. Everything was a strange contrast from what we had left; the cold colouring of Manchuria was replaced by a warm red soil, through which the first tokens of spring green were beginning to appear. Instead of the blue clothing to which we had been accustomed, every one here was clad in white, both in town and country. Rice fields greet the eye at every turn, for this is the main cereal grown. The only things that were the same were the Japanese line and the Japanese official, no more conspicuous here than in Manchuria, and apparently firmly rooted in both.

Korea is somewhat larger in extent than Great Britain, about 80,000 square miles in size, and the population is estimated at about twelve to thirteen millions. Owing to the mountainous character of[63] Korea, a large part of it, especially in the north, is uninhabitable; in fact some people estimate that only one quarter is occupied. No census of the population was taken till that made by the Japanese in 1904. As the people feared that this was preliminary to a tax, they made every effort to prevent correct numbers being ascertained, and consequently the returns were less than nine and a half millions. Another census is now being taken, which, in all probability, will be much more accurate.

Korea is a country abounding in valuable products, one of the chief of which is gold. There are also excellent anthracite coal and other minerals, but as yet these resources have been little utilised. At the present time no less than one hundred and eighty-four mining concessions have been granted to British, American, German, and French companies, and their prospects are thoroughly encouraging. Korea is the fifth largest cotton producing country in the world, and now that it is opening up to trade, with fresh facilities of transport by land and sea, it is likely to make rapid progress. The people are naturally peaceful and diligent, and under a wise rule the land ought to become an ideal one. Christianity and education are spreading rapidly, the former being said to have already 200,000 adherents. The written language is alphabetical, and consists of twenty-five letters, but the literate Koreans use Chinese characters, and all of them are expected to know that language. The missionaries decided to use the Un Mum, the native[64] script, and most of the Christian literature is published in that form. The Protestant Missions have been working only about twenty-five years in Korea, but the Roman Catholics were there long ago, and the terrible persecutions they underwent form one of the most striking chapters in Korean history. The former have had remarkable success, and have introduced fresh methods of missionary enterprise, which will be described in the next chapter, as they are likely to have great influence on the future development of missions in other countries. Nowhere have the people of a country more thoroughly recognised their duty of handing on the gift they have received, or of accepting their personal responsibility for evangelising their own people.

[66]

We reached Pyöng Yang (written Ping Yang by the war correspondents, and universally pronounced Piang) in the early afternoon, and found chairs sent by our kind hosts to take us from the station to the town, a distance of about one and a half miles. Other passengers got into rickshas, and others again into the drollest little trolleys on wheels, like boxes with the front side missing, and containing a bench to seat two persons. These trolleys run on the narrowest gauge tram lines, and are propelled with great rapidity by a coolie running on each side: I have never seen them anywhere but at Pyöng Yang.

We set off in our chairs, our luggage being carried on frames called “giggies” on the backs of coolies, and the Chinese interpreter, whom we had brought from Tai Yuan Fu (Mr. Chiao, pronounced “jow,” as in jowl) walking with a friendly Korean evangelist sent to meet us. We had been told that Chinese was understood everywhere, but this proved entirely incorrect (like most of the information we had received),[68] and we were vastly entertained to see that these two could only communicate by writing; this they did on the surface of the dusty road as they went along. Our pace was fortunately slow, as Korean carriers are not like the Chinese, and they set us down pretty frequently for a rest, which was an opportunity for communication eagerly seized by the writers. Near the station are handsome large new red brick barracks, and a Japanese suburb is growing up: it is sad to see every place being disfigured by European-looking erections of the ugliest and most aggressive type. The American Presbyterian group of buildings are a delightful contrast to these, and are Korean in style with necessary adaptation for Western requirements, but there is a hideous new school on the brow of the hill facing them, which stands in conspicuous nakedness like a blot on the landscape. A sort of building epidemic seems to have broken out, which threatens to sweep away all picturesqueness from the important towns in Korea.

The city of Pyöng Yang is of great antiquity, and is said to date back as far as 1122 B.C., when the celebrated Ki Cha reigned there.

The streets still retain a great charm, but each day sees it lessening. The stalls contain all sorts of strange comestibles, among which fish occupy a prominent position, and various seaweeds are a natural accompaniment to them. Dried cuttle fish hang up in rows, and are a tasty dish in the eyes of the natives, and all kinds of other fish are dried and hung up in strings to form artistic designs for the adornment of the shops, as well[69] as for the benefit of purchasers. Next in number to fish shops are those for hats, I should think, and these are quite unique. I understand that a book has been written on the subject, so numerous are the varieties in Korea. The common hat is made of black crinoline, rather like the old Welsh hat, but not so tall, and it is tied with black strings under the chin. As the whole of the rest of a Korean’s costume is white, the black hat forms a telling contrast. The hair is allowed to grow long, and is gathered into a top knot, which is visible within the transparent crown of the hat. A closely fitting cap of horsehair rising into a peak is worn indoors, and below it is a tight band of horsehair about a quarter of an inch wide, bound round the head, greatly to the detriment of the circulation. The mourning cap or hat is white, or rather cream colour, and still more commonly is a large hat worn as mourning, looking like an inverted flower, and accompanied by a long coat of stiff undressed cotton to match (see sketch). Scholars wear a somewhat different shaped crinoline hat, and boys celebrate their engagement by wearing a special little straw hat. Official hats again are quite different, of which an example may be seen in the design on the book cover.

One of the most familiar sights passing along the streets is the water-carrier, for up to the present time the water-supply of Pyöng Yang has been entirely drawn from the river, and the men carry the water in pails on their backs; in fact, unlike China, everything almost is carried on the back in Korea, and frequently the loads[70] are of a great weight. The old tradition is that Pyöng Yang is a floating city (it was built boat-shaped), and no one is supposed to dig in it, for fear of sinking the ship.

One of the most interesting places outside the town is a famous temple beautifully situated on the brow of a hill, set up to the god of war. It was small and fairly well kept, and the priest made some fuss before allowing us to enter. Like all the temples here, there is but scant space within the building for any worshippers, but as they have no conception of congregational worship, this is a matter of no importance. The original religion of Korea was Shamanism, the worship of evil spirits, and although it is supposed to have been superseded first by Confucianism and later on by Buddhism (A.D. 550), it still retains its hold over the people, and is carried on side by side with Confucianism and Buddhism. Its shrines are to be found in Seoul itself and also by the wayside in all parts of the country. The main point in the religion of the educated Korean, as of the Chinese, is ancestor worship, and in the courtyard of every large house may be seen the ancestral tablet house, where are the tablets of two or three generations. There seem to be considerably fewer temples in Korea than in China; they are less imposing, and less frequented.

We next visited the fine new waterworks built by the Japanese, and they have selected a beautiful spot on the summit of a hill overlooking the town, as well as an island in the river which they have connected[71] with the mainland by a bridge. Soon that picturesque being—the water-carrier—will be nothing more than a memory; but undoubtedly the advantages of a good water-supply will reconcile the inhabitants to the change. I am greatly astonished at the charge of dirtiness so frequently brought against the Koreans, for on the whole they would bear comparison with almost any European nation. They lavish endless time and energy on getting their clothes white and well laundered, for which they possess the most primitive implements imaginable. The garment is folded quite wet, placed on a board, and beaten rapidly with two flat sticks for any length of time. The sound greets one’s ears all day and every day in the streets, and resembles that of a stick being drawn across palings; if you happen to be lying ill, the endless sound is apt to be as nerve racking as the notes of the brain-fever bird in India.

After climbing down to the river-bed by the waterworks, we proceeded to climb up the opposite slope, where numbers of people seemed bent on holiday-making, and there was a Japanese tea-house half-way up to Pioneer Point, whence a magnificent view is gained over a large stretch of country. The old city walls and a watch-tower surmount the pine-clad hill, and a short walk brings one to a tomb of historic interest. In the heart of the pine forest is Kicha’s grave, but the entrance was tightly shut and barred, so that we were only able to get a glimpse of it. Like all important Korean graves, it is a mound surrounded[72] by stone animals and figures of servants for the use of the deceased, and an altar on which sacrificial food is placed. Kicha is said to have come to Korea in 1122 B.C. as a refugee from China, to be the founder of the empire, and to have given it its name of “Land of Morning Freshness.” His dynasty lasted nearly a thousand years. The old city wall of Pyöng Yang is said to date from Kicha or Kuei-ja’s reign, but it is, alas, now in course of demolition. This synchronises with the coming of the first party of Cook’s personally conducted tours!

SHORT SUMMARY OF RECENT KOREAN HISTORY.

It is possible that some readers of this book may wish to have their memories refreshed about the events which have crowded so rapidly on one another’s heels during the last half century, so I have ventured to set down a table of dates with notes, which can easily be skipped by those whose memories do not require it.

1876. First foreign treaty with Japan—unsuccessful attempts had previously been made by the Russians and Americans to obtain permission to trade.

1883. Trade relations opened with Great Britain, America, and Germany. Owing to internal factions, the Chinese, representing the conservative forces of[73] government, got decided hold in Korea over the radical party, represented by Japanese factions.

1885. Treaty between China and Japan guaranteeing that neither country should send troops to Korea without previous consultation.

1890 (approximately). First Protestant missions sent to Korea—mainly American.

1894. China sent troops (without advising Japan) to put down the Tonghak rebellion; hence resulted the war with Japan, in which China was completely defeated.

1896. Russian influence became powerful. The Emperor took refuge in Russian legation. Lobanoff Yamaga agreement between Russians and Japanese to respect the independence of Korea, and not to send troops except by mutual agreement.

1903. Russian intrigue won large timber concessions on the Yalu, and demanded port on the N.W. coast opposite Antung-Yongampo, which they renamed Port Nicholas. This was applied for by Great Britain and United States of America as an open port, but Russian influence prevented this being granted.

1904. War declared between Russia and Japan; Korea made agreement with Japan to facilitate its campaign on the basis of Korea’s independence. Since then the Japanese have steadily increased their control over Korean affairs.

1907. The Emperor forced by the Japanese to abdicate in favour of his nephew.

Sunday is a busy day for missionary workers at Pyöng Yang, as the rapid growth of the work and the need for consolidation by constant instruction, taxes the resources even of the large staff of foreign as well as native helpers. We were told that in many cases before the building of a church is completed the congregation has outgrown it, and that from one church alone (the central one at Pyöng Yang) no less than thirty-nine others have “swarmed” merely for lack of space, not from any discord. Thirty-five of these churches are in the district round the town, four others are in the town itself; the youngest of them already has a membership of 561. This is the result of sixteen years of work, for the missionaries settled there in 1894, and the first convert was baptized that year.

We started out about 10 o’clock to make a round of some of the places of worship. The first visited was a women’s institute, where we found a large upper room filled with about 500 women and nearly as many babies and little children. At the door of the Korean churches and schools the first thing to be[75] noticed is the shoe stand, where each comer deposits shoes before entering. The floors are covered with matting, and every one sits cross-legged: the babies are noisy, but their crying is not nearly so sharp as that of Europeans, though sufficiently disturbing to any ordinary speaker. At the harmonium a sweet-faced Korean girl sat, whose playing was very superior to the singing. What it lacked in harmony, however, was atoned for by its earnestness, and in all the services the reverent attention of the whole audience was most impressive; even the little children covered their eyes with their hands during prayer. From below stairs came the lusty tones of children singing “Hold the Fort,” and we found a Sunday school in progress, the classes sitting in circles on the floor, each with a girl teacher in the centre. The children have been less cared for than the adults hitherto, but they look most attractive and winning, and greater efforts are now being made to provide for their instruction.

We next visited the central church, where the men had just finished their morning session of Bible instruction (9-10.30), and the women were rapidly gathering. Nowhere could there be found a more attractive sight than the hundreds of white clad women, carrying their books wrapped in cloth tied round their waists in front, or their children tied on behind, the little ones dressed in every colour of the rainbow. The service is much like Sunday school at home; after the opening hymn and prayers, the[76] women are divided into classes, and the older children, like a gay group of butterflies, are gathered at the back of the church to be taught separately. Some of the girls had hats which take up space, as they are much larger than umbrellas, and are carried by both hands, extending over the head in front and to the knees behind. These are peculiar to this district, and are used not mainly for protection from the sun or rain, but from the vulgar gaze of man. I sketched one of the school girls on the verandah, wearing the big hat. They have to be left outside the church in the verandah with the shoes. Some of the young women of the wealthier classes look quite charming in their nun-like coifs, and dressed from head to foot in dazzling white silk, with smart little sleeveless coats lined with white fur; the fur also forms a border all round the coat and outlines the arm-holes. Womankind in Korea suffers from a strange lack—the absence of names. A woman may possess a pet name, otherwise she has none; frequently she does not even know her husband’s name. If she becomes a Christian and receives baptism she acquires a name, and this must give her quite a new sense of dignity. The Korean woman has not been considered of much value in the past, but she is awakening (under Christian influences) to a sense of responsibility, and she takes her share in the work of evangelisation among her people. There had been a fortnight’s Bible study for women just before our arrival at Pyöng Yang, attended by over 500, many of whom had come long distances on foot to[77] attend it. Some had travelled no less than seventy miles on foot, carrying their supply of food with them; they were lodged by the Christians in the city without charge, and after earnest study they set out on their long homeward journey. There is also a special Bible school for a fortnight for those women who wish to become teachers or Bible women, many of whom are supported by the native church. The Women’s Missionary Society of the Central Church has supported two missionaries for some years.

The morning school in the Central Church numbered five or six hundred, so that when both men and women come in the afternoon to a united service of worship the church is full to overflowing: it holds 1500 to 1700.

The venerable pastor, Kil Moksa, is a Korean of solid character, who has done much to lessen the evils incident to the coming of the Japanese. Seeing the utter hopelessness of resistance, he persuaded the people neither to flee nor to resist, so that the bloodshed which took place in the south of the country was avoided in the north. His influence is not only powerful but widespread, and it is sad to see the curtailing of his work owing to increasing blindness. He was originally an ardent Confucian, and not content with a passive faith he practised rigorous austerities in order to obtain peace of mind. In describing this time, Kil Moksa said: “I was trying to put away every thought of worldly advancement and every filthy or unclean impulse, for I knew right and wrong then just as well[78] as I do now. I endeavoured to keep my mind pure by concentrating upon the idea of a full moon in my stomach. By centring my thoughts upon this I endeavoured to shut out the world and secure a view of spiritual truth. I wanted to get a vision of some spiritual being, but all the time, in spite of my efforts, my mind was filled with thoughts I would fain have dismissed. I could not get the victory. At the end of my stay on the mountain side, when I went to the homes of my friends, I was filled with disgust because their conversation was all about worldly advancement or interspersed with filthy stories.” When Kil Moksa became a Christian he was equally filled with this passionate desire for righteousness, not for himself only, but for his people. When his people seemed to be growing careless, he started a daily prayer-meeting at 4 o’clock in the morning, and this was soon attended by six or seven hundred people, with the result that a great revival took place, and his people promised to spend over 3000 days in trying to win others to a knowledge of Christ.

We next visited the Union Theological Seminary, vacated by the students on Sunday and used as a church, where we found numbers of men all seated on the floor with the teacher in the centre. The bulk of the teaching and preaching in Korea is done by natives, and every church has a native pastor; the foreign missionary acts as superintendent of groups of churches (sometimes as many as fifty or sixty) extending over a large area of the province. The[79] college students were all busy on Sunday either preaching or itinerating in town and country, and in order to facilitate this arrangement they have no classes on Saturday afternoon or Monday morning. They remain at college only three months in the year, and spend the remaining nine in practical work. Their course extends over five years, and by this arrangement the four missions which it represents are able to supply the requisite number of teachers from their ordinary staff of workers; these teachers can be spared from their other work for three months in the year, though it is only in cases of special qualification that the same man is sent three years in succession. The head of the college is, of course, a permanent official, and lives at Pyöng Yang. This is Dr. Moffett, who was stoned out of Pyöng Yang when he first came; he frequently used to hear the remark at he passed along the streets on those early days, “Look at this black rascal! why did he come here? let us kill him.” Nowhere was the opposition to Christianity fiercer than at Pyöng Yang; it was a notoriously bad city. The students at the present time number 126, and the missions represented are the American Presbyterian (North and South), the Australian Presbyterian, and the Canadian Presbyterian. The college is a modest and unpretentious building in native style, and it is proposed to build dormitories round the compound as soon as the ground has been levelled.

From this point we crossed the town to the imposing[80] group of buildings of the Methodist Episcopal Mission, which are in American style. The fine large church has a belfry, which can be seen as well as heard from afar. We entered at the back of the women’s side, divided from the men’s by a screen, and found it well filled. One of the missionaries told us that it had the largest “floor space” of any church in Korea. As we entered four young men mounted the platform and sang an anthem, but none of our party could decide whether it was in Korean or English. Then the sermon began, and we slipped out to continue our pilgrimage. The greatest harmony exists between the different missions, and the preacher for the day belonged to the Presbyterians. The main difference between the missions is one of policy. The Presbyterians encourage the Koreans to rely upon their own efforts for support, to build their own churches in native style, and to undertake the work of evangelisation at their own expense. The offerings of the Korean church (that is of all the missions) is said to be already £25,000 per annum, and the number of converts 200,000; not a bad result to show for only twenty-five years of missionary work. (These figures are drawn from the report for the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh.) The American Episcopal Mission do not expect as much from the native church as do the Presbyterians, and they keep the pastorate and general control to a greater extent in their own hands. They have larger funds at their disposal, and do not require the village communities[81] to build their own churches, whereas the Presbyterians only help them with a loan, which is repaid in two years. Even the primary schools are entirely supported by the Koreans. The Methodist Episcopal Mission has initiated work among the blind, and it has a promising school of blind girls, who are already preparing text-books in Braille with a view to the opening of other schools for the blind. The Presbyterians have also started a class for blind boys, but it is more difficult to know what to teach them as a means of livelihood than it is in the case of girls. They have begun to prepare a New Testament in Braille type, but it will require a great deal of revision; the British and Foreign Bible Society has promised to print it as soon as it is ready, at cost price. The lot of the blind in Korea is a sad one; their sole means of earning a living is by practising sorcery.

In conclusion, I must add a word as to the character of the native Christians in Pyöng Yang, but which is equally applicable to the rest of the Korean Church. It is not only remarkable to see the number of Christians, but still more so to see their character. One of the ablest speakers at the Edinburgh Conference was the Hon. T. H. Yun of Songdo, Minister of Education, and leader of the native church, a man of culture and refinement, of whom any country might well be proud. He spoke of the danger due to the extraordinarily rapid growth of the church, yet nevertheless urged the desirability of trusting it with enlarged responsibilities. As far as my experience goes this[82] has been done in Korea to a greater extent than anywhere else in the many mission fields that I have visited. The Christians have shown such a keen desire for instruction, together with such an aptitude for learning, that they are much more capable of self-government, and of forming a national church, than would be conceived possible by those who have not seen this wonderful people. They have devoted themselves with extraordinary ardour to the study of the Bible. The membership of a great Bible class at Syen Chun is over thirteen hundred, and the Bible is the most read book in Korea to-day. They memorise it apparently as well as do the Chinese; two school girls may be mentioned as having learnt by heart the whole of the New Testament, with the exception of St. Matthew’s Gospel, in the course of a year. Yet less than thirty years ago it was prohibited to sell it in the Hermit Kingdom, as Korea has so justly been called, and it was only possible to do so by having the Gospels done up in bundles, unbound, and distributed through the country by the natives. To them is mainly due the introduction of Christianity into Korea.

Another striking feature of the Korean church is the importance they attach to prayer, and their implicit belief in its efficacy. Where else in the world is to be found a weekly prayer-meeting which habitually numbers thirteen or fourteen hundred? Yet such is the case at the Central Church at Pyöng Yang. Mention has already been made (page 78) of an early[83] morning prayer-meeting, which cannot find a parallel, I think, in any of our home churches.

No less important is the characteristic of generosity both in the matter of money and labour. In some churches they are hardly willing to admit any one as a member who has not already won at least one convert to Christianity. A form of contribution was started by which people promise to give a day’s work during a certain specified time. Last year there were over 67,000 days promised throughout the country. It is hardly necessary to give further details as to the generosity of the Koreans with regard to money, because of what has already been related, but I must point out that the majority of the Korean Christians are extremely poor, and great self-sacrifice is involved by the amount of work which they support, as well as by what they do personally.

The extraordinarily rapid progress of Protestant missions in Korea makes one turn with interest to the past history of the country in its attitude towards Christianity, as shown in the work of the Roman Catholics. This history is a very unique one, and is characterised by some of the same features as we see to-day; the zeal, self-sacrifice, and faith, the independent spirit which makes the Koreans able, if need be, to carry on the work without foreign aid, are to be seen on every page of its history. No church has had to pass through more ceaseless and relentless persecution for the first century of its existence, nor has counted more heroic martyrs among its members. The story has been fully told in Père Dallet’s Histoire de l’Église de Korée, and I was so impressed with that work that I have ventured to make a brief sketch of it, in the hope that it will be of interest to those who are unable to study that history for themselves.

The first introduction of Christianity into Korea[85] was a strange one. In 1592 Japan sent an army of 200,000 men to conquer the country, and a large number of these men had been selected for the purpose because they were Roman Catholics, and Japan was anxious to get rid of them. The great general known as Taïko Sama thought this was an excellent method of extermination, but when the war was prolonged, the Christian admiral of the fleet sent to Japan for priests and commenced missionary work. Many converts were baptized, and things looked promising, when the sudden recall of the army to Japan, followed by a fierce persecution, completely stamped out the work in both countries.

Korea continued her policy of jealously excluding all foreigners from entering the country, and only occasionally were a few books (printed in Chinese) sent over by the Jesuits from Peking. Not until 1784 was the work recommenced, and then it emanated from a purely Korean source. A young man called Piek-i, of great physical strength and intellectual keenness, heard that the father of a friend of his was going as ambassador to the court of China, and that his son was to accompany him. He therefore begged his friend, Senghoun-i, to use the opportunity to visit the foreigners there, in order to study their science and religion. Senghoun-i not only fulfilled his friend’s request, but was so deeply impressed by what he heard that he became a Christian and was baptized, after which he returned to his native land, carrying books, crosses, and pictures with him. He at once[86] sent books to Piek-i, who retired into solitude to study them, and was soon convinced by pondering over the life of Christ of the truth of what he read. No sooner did Piek-i become a Christian than he set out to tell his friend, Senghoun-i, the good news. “The great God of Heaven,” he said, “has had pity on the millions of our fellow-countrymen, and He desires us to make them share in the benefits of the Redemption of the world. It is the command of God. We cannot be deaf to His call. We must spread this religion and evangelise the whole world.” How thoroughly these words express the feelings and action of the Korean Christians of the present day!

Piek-i at once commenced the work of evangelisation, and success attended his labours; but close upon its heels came that persecution which was to continue down to the present day. There were no foreign missionaries to help or instruct the youthful disciples, and naturally they were unable to see the bearing of Christian teaching upon the customs to which they had always been accustomed. They evolved from their books a conception of the priesthood, and elected from their number a sort of religious hierarchy, which existed for some years undisturbed. When eventually they heard that this was not sanctioned by the authorities at Peking, and that they must utterly renounce the ancestor worship, which formed the basis of their former religious belief, and was so integral a part of the national life, it was a severe blow to them. They loyally obeyed, however,[87] the mandate to destroy the ancestral tablets, and a storm of persecution swept over the church.

The leaders were tortured and executed, firmly refusing to renounce their faith. Nevertheless the number of converts increased, and ten years after the baptism of Senghoun-i at Peking there were 4000 Christians in Korea. A time of comparative peace followed, and the church was consolidated. At last a priest was sent over from China called Jean dos Remedios, in 1791; but he was unable to penetrate into the country, and was obliged to return to Peking. No further attempt to send a missionary was made for several years. Then a young Chinaman called Tsiou was selected for the perilous task, and during a stormy night he succeeded in crossing the closely guarded frontier disguised as a Korean. Some months later the news of his arrival became known to the authorities, and they ordered his arrest. But the Koreans who had long been asking for a missionary to be sent to them guarded him with the utmost loyalty, and the authorities seized instead the Koreans who had brought him into the country, and after cruel tortures which utterly failed to make them confess his whereabouts, they were put to death.

Tsiou, meanwhile, mainly owed his safety to a devoted Christian woman, and continued his labours unremittingly in secret, while she prosecuted an important work in teaching a large number of girls. During the reign of the king at that time on the throne of Korea, the persecution was somewhat limited, but[88] as soon as he died in 1800 it broke out afresh with redoubled energy. Tsiou was at last captured, and with many others laid down his life, not only willingly, but joyfully. He was only twenty-five years of age. The persecution raged till the next year, when the king issued a strange edict, to the effect that he was determined to have done with the matter; that the Christians filling the prisons should at once be judged and executed, and after that no more trials were to be instituted. Many were publicly executed, while others were strangled in the prisons in order to expedite matters. Then followed a lull, and the church had a breathing space, but all its leaders had been put to death, and it was reduced to a pitiable condition.

The church sent a fresh appeal to the bishop at Peking to send them another priest, but he was utterly unable to grant their request, for the mission itself was at a low ebb on account of the French Revolution. No missionaries were coming out to the foreign field, and no promise even could be held out to the Koreans of any one coming to them in the future. Again and again their messenger braved untold risks to carry their piteous appeal to China, but in vain. To those who like myself intensely dislike the system and many of the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, while loving and profoundly venerating many of its adherents, this absence of the priesthood may well seem a blessing in disguise.

In 1816, for the fifth time, the messenger of the Korean Church arrived in Peking, and the bishop,[89] touched by their importunity, promised to send them a priest. Plans were arranged that he should be met and secretly taken into the country, for persecution still raged. The time came, but at the rendezvous the Koreans found no priest awaiting them; it had proved impossible to find any one willing to undertake the well-nigh hopeless mission. Years elapsed: they were all marked by the same record of faith and suffering, heroically borne, until the year 1827. Then followed three or four years of comparative peace, and the church steadily grew in numbers.

A letter was sent by it to the Pope, beseeching him to send reinforcements to the suffering Christians. He forwarded the appeal to the directors of the “Missions Etrangères” in France, which had recently been re-established, after its destruction by Napoleon in 1805. The directors forwarded the appeal, making it known throughout their missions, with the result that Monseigneur Brugnière, a missionary in Siam, volunteered for the perilous task in a letter burning with apostolic love and zeal. His offer was accepted by the society, and after some delay he set out accompanied by a young Chinese priest, educated in Naples, who had also volunteered for the service.

Three years were spent by them in weary journeyings without success, owing partly to the jealousy of a Chinese priest who had been sent meanwhile to Korea by the Sacrée Congrégation de la Propagande, and when at last the difficulties were on the eve of being overcome, Monseigneur Brugnière was taken[90] suddenly ill and died on the very threshold of the promised land.

In 1836 the first European missionary penetrated into the country, and he was soon followed by others in steady succession. Despite the ceaseless persecutions the number of Christians in 1838 was estimated at 9000. The following year a more violent persecution than ever broke out, and the three French missionaries were betrayed and executed, beside many Koreans of all ranks. The authorities were firmly resolved to exterminate them; but the attitude of the Korean people in general towards the Christians was no longer what it had been. Whereas previously they had been despised, now they were respected, for the people realised that there was a power in this religion which nothing could annihilate. The Christians had been decimated as to numbers, and such as had escaped destruction were reduced to a state of utter destitution, yet still they remained loyal to their convictions. The non-Christian Koreans came to the rescue and lent them the necessary grain to sow their fields, well assured that they would honestly repay the loan, unlike what would have been the case with some others of their fellow-countrymen.

The foreign missionaries having been murdered, there was a new development in the life of the Korean Church; for the first time they had two priests of their own nationality consecrated in China. They came to the church at a time of great need, for persecution was raging more hotly than ever. The time[91] for labour was but brief in the case of one of them, André Kim. His undaunted courage and zeal led him, at the age of twenty-five, to the crown of martyrdom, “he being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time. For his soul pleased the Lord.”

In 1850 we again find two French missionaries at work, who gave their testimony as to the steady growth of the church, despite ceaseless persecution. European missionaries could only enter the country by stealth, and they always had to endure untold hardships in the prosecution of the work, which could never be carried on openly. Monseigneur Daveluy described it in these words: “Our year (1859) may be summed up thus—miseries upon miseries, but everywhere the great protection of God, and in the midst of tribulations the advance of the apostolic work.”

The aggressiveness of the Russians in the north in 1866 goaded the Korean Emperor into a fierce determination to exterminate the Christians once for all. He began by putting to death all the French missionaries upon whom he could lay his hands, and nine out of twelve were taken. They seem to have been put to the torture before execution; one was Bishop Daveluy, who had spent twenty-one years in the country, and another was the latest recruit who had only been there nine months. The three other missionaries succeeded in escaping from the country, and one of them told the whole sorrowful story to the French admiral at Tientsin, which resulted in the sending of an expedition against Korea.

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Meanwhile the church in Korea was exposed to relentless persecution, and was again left to carry on unaided the long struggle to win her people to the Catholic faith. Here Père Dallet’s narrative ends; but it would not be complete without adding one word as to the position and numbers of the Roman Catholics in Korea at the present day. I regret that it only amounts to a statistical statement drawn from Krose’s Katholische Missions Statistik, 1908.

The mission is that of the Paris Seminary, and there are 45 European priests, 53 sisters, and 10 native priests now working in different parts of the country. Their native membership numbers 64,070 and they have 8220 catechumens. They have 45 stations, and a considerably larger number of schools. I hoped to have visited the sisters working at Seoul, and to have been able to give some personal details, but was prevented from doing so, as well as from visiting various institutions, owing to the fact of having a severe chill, which confined me to bed during much of the time I was there.

Unlike Venice, Seoul should not be approached after dark, but we arrived late at night, and drove in rickshas through ill-lighted streets and over endless stones to our destination, Miss Finder’s rest-house for missionaries, excellently situated in the upper part of the town.

With morning light we received a different and beautiful impression of the town. It is encircled within lofty hills of granite that change in colour at different times of day from gold and steel to deep blue. Formerly high walls surrounded it, pierced by noble gateways, but these walls are rapidly disappearing to form material for building Japanese houses of truly Philistine ugliness. Every day sees new and deplorable changes in the way of picturesqueness, and one is tempted to say that even sanitation may be too dearly bought.

We started on a lovely spring morning to visit the old palace, which, subject to certain rules, is now thrown open to the public at a small charge. The first rule is that visitors must be respectably dressed, the next that they must not catch birds or fish, and so on. The Imperial Palace covers a large area of ground,[94] and is surrounded by lofty walls, in which there are eight or ten doorways, surmounted by the typical curved and tiled roofs. It looks like a small walled town, and used to contain some 3000 persons. The main entrance to the palace is at the end of a wide thoroughfare, adorned with fine stone animals on pedestals, and flanked by official buildings on each side, which, alas, are being pulled down to be replaced by Japanese buildings. This thoroughfare was a gay and busy scene. The Korean dress is eminently picturesque, and many of the women wear brilliant cloaks of lettuce or apple green with scarlet streamers; this cloak depends from the crown of the head to below the knees; the sleeves are never used, nor indeed could they be used, as the space for the neck is filled in with a piece of white material which acts as a cap and raises the coat several inches above the proper height. This strange garment is said to have been originally a man’s coat, and the wives used to wear it (as so many Eastern women do) to conceal their figures in the streets. It certainly adds a most charming note of colour to the streets of Seoul. The ordinary dress of the women is entirely white; it consists of a short coat, baggy trousers, and large pleated apron completely enclosing them and acting as a skirt. The lower class women are not careful to prevent there being a gap between the upper and lower garments; as they seem to be always nursing a baby, they no doubt think the costume was devised to suit that purpose. My sketch shows the dress with the addition of the winter cap.

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On passing from the square into the precincts of the palace by the main gateway you have a vision of harmony in green; a delicate, subtle blending of greens in courtyard buildings, and pine-trees behind them, while the range of hills towers in the background. A beautiful bridge spans a sort of moat, over which grotesque stone creatures lean towards the water as if about to plunge into it. On the right there is an entrance to an open space of ground where the Japanese are erecting a boys’ school. This is a hard blow to Korean pride, but unfortunately our Japanese allies are apparently reckless of such details, and instead of trying to make their protectorate as conciliatory as possible, they too often do the reverse; indeed it is only in rare instances that they seem to do otherwise. In many ways they are doing a great deal which should benefit the country, but in such a manner as to make it thoroughly obnoxious. It is of little use to repudiate the idea of annexation, when they trample on the dearest wishes of the Korean, and treat him as a vanquished foe. From this courtyard one passes into others where the sewing women used to live, for there are numbers of courts surrounded by houses varying in size and importance, but all of them in a state of decay.

The palace is the most beautiful and cherished spot in the capital, and it is sad to see it falling to pieces with alarming rapidity, while the part inhabited by the Empress was absolutely destroyed and its very stones used in the construction of other buildings.

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The great audience chamber is a glorious colour study in green, Venetian red, gold, and blue, with lofty pillars stretching up to the ornate roof, which culminates in a centrepiece of gold dragons, somewhat different in design from the Chinese dragon. Although it is only one storey, the roof has been so built so as to give it a great appearance of height. All round the hall are latticed windows, which could be set open for large audiences. The hall is surrounded on three sides by a fine large paved court, through the centre of which runs a double line of stones like milestones; they mark the places where the courtiers used to stand according to their rank when waiting their turn for audience on state occasions.

Court beyond court the palace stretches to the Emperor’s private apartments, which were more modest in size than the public halls.

The Emperor used to rise about noon, so the morning hours were quite quiet, no unnecessary labour being permitted. The imperial réveillé was announced by a roll of drums, summoning all courtiers, physicians, and attendants to be in readiness for his Majesty’s appearance. Then the courts became thronged like a busy hive of bees; the courtiers got out of their chairs at the entrance, and were only allowed to bring in one or two attendants, while the remainder of their retinue waited outside. The court dress consists of a beautiful myrtle green coat, a square breastplate (betokening the official[97] rank) fastened on by a thick belt standing out several inches from the body, black velvet top-boots with white soles, and a peculiar tall black cap made of horsehair, with ears of the same material standing out on each side of it. This costume forms the design on the cover of the book, and it was a Korean gentleman who kindly gave me the opportunity of sketching it. This costume was also worn by eunuchs when on duty in the palace. As in China, eunuchs have played a sorry part in the political game in Korea.

The ordinary business of the court used to be transacted during the afternoon. Sometimes one of the ministers of the foreign legations would be received in audience by his Majesty, and sometimes there would be a special function with regard to ancestral worship. Once a year the Emperor would go to a certain field outside Seoul (which was pointed out to us near the east gate of the city) to plough the first furrow of the year.

After sundown the gates of the palace were shut and barred, and no one might go in or out without special permission of the Emperor. During the night state business was transacted, and not only was his Majesty informed of matters of importance, but he was also entertained with the small talk of the palace. There were always one or two Ministers of State on duty throughout the night, and they left the palace at daybreak, when the Emperor retired to rest.

To the left of the Emperor’s private apartments[98] there is a gateway leading out into a place of delight, a large walled garden containing a spacious open summer-house surrounded by water. It is on a stone platform, and consists of two storeys, supported on handsome pillars and devoid of walls. The roof was of the usual Chinese type, with overhanging eaves enriched with carvings painted blue, green, and gold, contrasting finely with the Venetian red of the balcony and ceilings. A flight of steps leads down from it to the pond which is full of lotus blossoms, below which gold fish may be discerned in peaceful security. Here again the hand of time is heavy, walls are falling down, steps dropping asunder, and the brickwork beginning to crumble at the present time. It is only used for Japanese garden parties, and one would fain hope that the Japanese love of beauty will conquer prejudice sufficiently to save it from the ravages of time and neglect before it is too late. Beautiful pine-trees and hills form a worthy setting to this jewel.

The Dowager Empress Hong had her own residence and separate establishment in the rear of this part of the palace, where she was frequently visited by the Emperor, usually accompanied by the Crown Prince. In Korea it is considered the duty of every son, or adopted son, to visit his mother daily. Every afternoon the Dowager Empress sent two or three of her ladies-in-waiting to present her compliments to his Majesty, and to inquire after his health. The ladies who were sent on this errand had to wear some additional garment for the purpose, or to have their[99] hair dressed over an immense frame. The residence of the Dowager Empress was enclosed within high walls, and the entrance gate was hung with dark blue cloth, ornamented with balls of white cotton wool, so that when the gates were open no one should be able to see into the courtyard. Two of the palace police, men of superior position to the city police, were stationed as guards outside the gates. After the death of the Empress Min, the Crown Prince occupied the same residence as the Emperor, and they were rarely separated from one another. During the Russo-Japanese war it was reported by some of the war correspondents that the Emperor had married the daughter of an American missionary, and that she was called the Empress Emily Brown. As this story obtained a certain amount of credence in America I am glad to be able to state publicly that there was not a word of truth in the rumour. The Emperor was devoted to the memory of the Empress Min, and has not married again. For this and the other details of palace life I am indebted to a friend who was at that time closely connected with the court, and who continued so for many years afterwards.

The Crown Princess had her own house and establishment like the Dowager Empress, but on a smaller scale. Every afternoon she went to pay her respects to the Emperor, attended by her ladies-in-waiting and eunuchs, and they might not leave the royal presence until dismissed. This custom was not confined to royalty, but in the Korean nobility etiquette[100] demands that daughters should pay their respects to fathers, and daughters-in-law to their fathers-in-law, and that they should remain standing until dismissed or asked to sit down. According to the usual custom in the East the wives of the sons live in the same compound as the father, frequently in the same building as his wife and daughters, so the carrying out of this custom is a simple matter.

It may be of interest to know some details of the life of the women in an eastern palace. They come into the palace as children of nine or ten years old, bright, good-looking (the Korean ideal of beauty is very different from ours), and intelligent girls. They are trained by other girls a year or two older than themselves, each for her own department. As soon as the children enter service the pigtail of childhood is abandoned, and the hair is dressed in a knot, resting on the nape of the neck. This signifies marriage in the case of all other Korean maidens; but marriage is prohibited in the case of those who enter service in the palace, although it is admittedly the duty of every woman. The girls are dressed in white silk jackets and long mazarine blue silk skirts. The little ones are sometimes allowed to wear pink or yellow silk jackets, but never the elder ones.

If the attendants commit any serious offence, it is reported to the head of the department; those, for instance, who act as ladies’ maids are reported to the head lady in waiting, those in the kitchen to the head housekeeper. One particular woman in this[101] department had been responsible for over fifty years for the dressing of the fish, yet she was only sixty-five when she mentioned the fact, so her responsibilities had begun early.

There are, however, alleviations to the lot of the palace attendants, for they have alternately ten days’ duty and ten days’ holiday. The royal ladies have not only women attendants, but also eunuchs, one of the worst curses of life in an eastern palace. They are required to carry messages from one department to another, and also to perform other duties. One of the eunuchs belonging to the household of the Dowager Empress used to read aloud to her a small daily Korean newspaper. While so doing he sat outside the window, where he could be heard, but whence he could not see inside, because the window was of paper. Korea is like China in respect of windows, and is only now beginning to replace paper by glass.

All this old palace life which I have been describing came to an end not long after the death of the Dowager Empress in 1904. We wandered among the desolate ruins which marked the site of her residence. Finally we reached a grove of pines where is a strange memorial—more like a bandstand than anything else—it marks the site where the remains of the late Empress Min were burned, after she had been cruelly done to death by the Japanese in 1895. In vain her ladies had closed up round her and tried to save her; in vain had one of them declared herself to be the Empress and paid the penalty—in vain, alas!—with[102] her own life. She was hunted from the very presence of the Emperor to her own apartments in the middle of the night, and there put to the sword. In 1897 the court removed to the new palace in the western section of the city, where the deposed Emperor still lives.

Another day we visited the mausoleum erected to her memory, in a beautiful spot some miles to the east of the city. Passing through the east gate we took a tram through the suburbs till we reached the terminus, and there turning off into the woods we walked along a beautiful shady road for nearly a mile. One or two parties of Japanese were the only people we met, and they were evidently bent on picnicking, a favourite form of amusement among them. We had an American friend with us, and when we got to our destination she feared we would not be allowed to climb the hill on which the monument stood. I decided not to wait for permission, and hastily ran up to a beautiful spot commanding a fine view over the plain with the tomb immediately below me, and set to work with the utmost despatch. I had the pleasure of seeing the other visitors arrive and get sent away, and then the guard came up to dislodge me. I met him with a disarming smile, and showed him the sketch, ignoring his obvious intention. Our American friend was greatly concerned as to the righteousness of feigning ignorance, for she understood and translated all they were saying, such as that no one was allowed there except people of great importance, &c. &c. Further shouting from[103] below to send us away was followed by the slow climbing of the hill by other officials. I greeted them in the same way as the first, and it had an equally disarming effect; they seemed quite nonplussed, and before they could decide how to act the sketch was finished, and I presented them with an acceptable douceur, and said good-bye. Their refusal to allow people to approach the tomb, where only the little finger of the Empress is buried, is quite reasonable, for the dearest Korean feelings have been outraged by the wanton disregard shown by visitors who have amused themselves by pretending to ride the stone animals and otherwise “fooling” about the spot.

Outside Seoul there are many graves of humbler persons, but selected with equal care, and I have made a sketch of one showing the kind of horseshoe mound within which they are most frequently placed. It was a beautiful spot, fragrant with wild azalea just coming into bloom. It is well described in Dr. Gale’s “Korean Sketches” (p. 216). “A grave is chosen on a mountain front if possible, having two arm-like ridges on either hand, one called the dragon side and one the tiger. There should be a mountain directly in the foreground called the An-san, to stand as a support to the family of the dead, otherwise the grave luck would flow down the valley and be dissipated. There must be free exit for streams or surface waters. This is the grave site in outline. Then come the special mountain peaks that are looked for on either side of the An-san. One will mean long life to the family,[104] another a numerous posterity, another rank, another wealth. Every mountain peak to right or left hand has its special message, which the geomancer (the man who has selected the site) holds in his professional grasp.”

There is not much to be seen in the town of Seoul, though it boasts a museum and zoological gardens. The present palace is beautifully situated near the east gate amongst fine pine-trees, and the present Emperor lives a secluded life there since the Japanese insisted upon his ascending the throne. Naturally these buildings are not open to the public.

There are various missionary bodies at work in the capital, where they have their headquarters, but all the leading people seemed to be away itinerating in the country. The Roman Catholics and Anglican Missions are active, but, as one of its members informed me, the work of the latter has only been fully developed during the last few years. The Young Men’s Christian Association have fine premises presented by an American, and the Salvation Army are the newest comers in the field.

The Japanese have built fine banks, post-office, railway station, and other public offices, but they prove desperately slow in transacting business. I had already experienced in Moukden that it required nearly an hour to get a few pounds on a letter of credit at a Japanese bank, and here they were equally slow. To my joy I saw a nice slab of Indian ink and a brush on the counter for signing names, for the Japanese, and[105] Chinese, and Koreans still paint instead of writing their signatures. I thought I would utilise the time by completing a sketch in my book while the clerk was busy calculating how much the sum I wanted would come to in Japanese money. I was soon disabused of the idea, for the whole staff of the bank collected round to watch the proceeding, including the clerk who was doing my business. No doubt they found it a pleasant distraction, and time seemed to be of no importance. Their calculations are all done with an abacus, and when I asked them simply to double the sum I had originally asked for, it took exactly eighteen minutes to calculate twice five! It is obvious that the interests charged on banking transactions must be large to cover the cost of stately buildings and numberless clerks, combined apparently with a minimum of business. The Japanese have imposed a Japanese currency on the country, and the bulk of the money used does equally for both countries, but there is a small quantity of coin bearing the Korean stamp which is not current in Japan.

It seems absurd to the traveller to hear the Japanese pretending that they have not annexed Korea, for they have, practically speaking, taken possession of everything in the most high-handed manner; they have dispossessed the Koreans of all riparian rights, of fishing, game shooting, of the coasting trade, of large quantities of land, for which a purely nominal price has been given, and which the Koreans have been forced to sell contrary to their wishes. The railways, post, and telegraph,[106] the currency, taxation, and customs, are entirely in their hands; what is left for them to appropriate? The bitterness of the bondage is aggravated by the fact that so few of the Japanese trouble to learn the language, so that misunderstandings constantly arise. They have given different names to the places, even to the capital. The courtesy, which is such a universal characteristic of the Japanese at home, he has left behind. However, it is to be remembered that this is a transitional period, and it is ardently to be desired that the Japanese Government will continue their good attempts to withdraw those who have been creating disturbances and to place a better class of officials in power. Some progress has already been made in this direction, especially with regard to the judges. The Koreans are reaping the harvest of neglected opportunities and churlish exclusiveness, and it is a bitter harvest.

One of the saddest losses Koreans have suffered of late has been that of Prince Ito, their best friend amongst their rulers, the irony of fate being shown in the fact that it was a Korean who murdered the Japanese prince. The murderer was taken for trial to Japan, and faced his death sentence with great equanimity. As he was engaged at the time in writing a poem, the authorities postponed his execution for ten days in order that he might have time to finish it!

The journey from Seoul to Fusan is through lovely cultivated land, everywhere varied by hill scenery, of which it has been estimated that three-fourths of Korea consists. The largest proportion of grain cultivated is rice, but wheat, barley, beans, millet, and other cereals grow equally well. It is truly a land flowing with milk and honey, has a beautiful climate, and if well governed ought to be most happy and prosperous. It is not subject to earthquakes, nor to any other great disasters, such as floods and plagues. Last year, it is true, cholera broke out in Seoul, but by the splendid exertions of the Japanese it was quickly brought under control with small loss of life.

As we travelled southward the land gradually became greener and the fruit-trees showed their delicate blossoms. Over the willows there was a delicate film of green, and the pink azaleas on the hill-sides glowed in the evening light. The journey of twenty hours seemed long, however, for we were travelling in an American car, and it taxed the ingenuity even of the small and supple Japanese officers, who were our fellow-travellers,[108] to make themselves comfortable in the first-class carriage. The attendant brought slippers all round, and when the officers had divested themselves of their boots and unrolled their rugs and eiderdowns, it became an interesting study to see them try to accommodate their forms to the small seats for two. As they found a resting-place for their heads, their feet crept up to the window-panes, or had to curl up like a spring. Happy the man who can sleep undisturbed in such quarters, with the constant noise of slamming doors and traffic passing through the car, which is the American ideal of railway comfort!

The day wore away, and as we were nearing Fusan the attendant came to brush us up and help us on with our coats; he also brought the surprising news that our friends at the next station had telephoned up the line to say they were coming to meet us, and that we should be ready to get out at the next station. Accordingly we did so, and our friends told us they had learnt that the boat by which we were going to Wonsan would not start till the following morning, and that we should not even be allowed to go on board till the next day. We were only too glad to accept the kind hospitality which they offered us instead of the cold comfort of a Japanese hotel at the port. It was very interesting to hear of work being carried on by the Australian Presbyterians in this part of the peninsula, though they have not had as rapid a success as their friends in the north. They[109] follow the same policy, the result being a strong self-supporting church.

I cannot omit a word about the experience of one of their new workers, as it shows the extraordinary results of Christianity in another mission field. This Scotsman only went to the New Hebrides some twelve years ago to work among the former cannibals. In order to do this more effectually they gave him, some time since, a motor boat to prosecute work among the islands; this boat he found invaluable, being an experienced seaman and working it himself. Unfortunately, owing to an attack of black-water fever, he was obliged to give up work there by the doctor’s orders, consequently the boat was left for the use of his successor. The natives were greatly distressed at his leaving, and presented him with no less a sum than £250 to commence work in his new sphere. He has decided to start a similar work among the countless islands round the Southern coast of Korea as soon as he has sufficiently mastered the language. The generosity involved in such a gift is hard to overestimate.

It may interest people to know that the working expenses of the motor boat comes to less than one penny a mile, namely about half the cost of itinerating on the mainland.

Fusan is a beautiful spot, in an ideal situation for a harbour, but the town itself has all the ugly characteristics of a busy seaport. The bay is surrounded with high hills, showing a picturesque and[110] varied outline, with fruit-trees and other vegetation, giving a brighter note of colour to the sombre pine-trees which cling to their rugged sides. The natural excellence of the harbour, which is almost closed by an island, leaving a channel for ships on both sides, has been further improved by the removal of some of the spurs of the hills so as to give larger space for wharfage. There is no doubt that Fusan will continue to grow in size and importance, as it is the terminus of the railway and the nearest point for reaching Japan. The ferry to Shimonoseki only takes twenty hours, and plies daily in both directions. In the centre of the town is a beautifully wooded little hill which has been laid out by the Japanese with great taste. Long flights of handsome stone steps lead directly upwards under the shade of overhanging pine-trees, and winding paths lead more gently to the summit, offering alluring seats from which to admire the bay. There is a succession of Shinto shrines which seem to be much frequented. The worshipper approaches, claps his hands loudly, or rings the bell to call the attention of the deity, and then kneels for a moment in prayer. Some of the worshippers tossed up beans as they knelt, or offered money, and there were not a few more costly offerings hanging up—long tresses of black hair. These temples are of recent date, and war trophies were also placed in front of them. Some of the passers-by paid no further attention to the shrine than to bow and remove their hats, but on the whole they elicited a considerable amount of[111] worship, and it is clear that the Japanese are more attached to their religion than some people give them credit for. In this case they have selected the most beautiful and most conspicuous place in the town for their temples; have made a noble approach to them, and planted the little terraces with lovely flowering shrubs, which were just bursting into blossom. The hill-sides were gay with wild azalea and fragrant with the scent of the pines.

We made an early start, as they assured us that it would be too late if we went into town by the morning train, so a primeval bus was chartered to convey us over the rugged roads, and we arrived at the office at 9.30, only to be told that the steamer would not start till 4 or 5 o’clock in the afternoon. We learnt afterwards that a large fine steamer left the night before, although they so confidently assured us there was none. It is a hard trial of patience to travel in Korea.

At the office of the Steamship Company we procured tickets, and were amused at having to give our ages to be inscribed on the tickets, which cost yen 14.70 (about twenty-nine shillings) to Wonsan, first class, a passage of between thirty to forty hours in length. The boat was a fair size, and was heavily laden with timber and petroleum. The staff was entirely Japanese, and little English was understood, but European requirements and wishes did not need to be explained, so we had no difficulty. A more lovely sight than the bay as we steamed out of it[112] past the four sentinel rocks at the entrance in the level rays of the setting sun would be hard to imagine, and one could not but remember how securely hidden the Japanese fleet lay there in wait for the Russian before the great battle in which the Baltic fleet was destroyed.

Our course followed the outline of the coast pretty closely, and the mountains still had touches of snow on them, like veins outlining their shapes. The mountains come quite close down on to the shore, and little cultivation is to be seen on this side of the peninsula. On the eastern coast of Korea there is a tide of only six or eight inches, whereas on the western coast it is no less than twenty-seven feet three inches, one of the highest tides in the world.

There were few birds visible—only an occasional seagull or cormorant, and the white-sailed boats that we had seen thronging the bay of Fusan were conspicuous by their absence. Hour after hour passed without a sign of life being visible. Fortunately the sea was calm, and the next morning but one we reached Wonsan at about 6 A.M. We had to land in small boats, and were met by a party of missionaries, with whom we walked through a good part of the modern town. It is well laid out, and has wide roads leading to the quarters where the American missionaries live on the slopes of hills overlooking the sea and embowered in trees. The Japanese name for Wonsan is Gensan.

Our friends had kindly begun before our arrival at Wonsan to make arrangements for the trip which we wished to take through the Diamond Mountains, so that a few hours sufficed to complete them. An attractive route was suggested by a native who knew the passes; the time at our disposal was only eight days, so we were obliged to give up all hope of doing the principal pass, which is lofty and very arduous for travellers. The one selected took us through a fine part of the chain of mountains which runs down the eastern coast of Korea, and enabled us to visit an important monastery. We started with four ponies and three men to look after them, and the price stipulated was 64 yen (a little over £6), the distance to be covered being approximately 225 miles. It was probable that the men would get some loads for the return journey, but that could not be counted on. We had no saddles, so our bed bags had to take their place, but they made precarious seats. At first one thought it would be only possible to retain one’s seat by holding on all the time, and the thought of the necessity of using a handkerchief owing to a severe cold in the head was an anxious one, but[114] time soon made us able to dispense with any grip. Mr. Chiao found his bedding a much more satisfactory seat than ours, for the usual Chinese bed bag seems to have been specially devised for the purpose; he looked completely at his ease, though he had never ridden before, and he hopped on and off his pony with astonishing rapidity. The fourth beast carried our two modest baskets of stores and clothing, and the cots which had been kindly lent to us for the occasion. Having lost our umbrellas we bought Korean paper waterproof coats, at the cost of about one shilling each, and waterproof paper for lining our other things, as there was some fear of wet weather on the mountains.

We set off about 2 o’clock with the intention of doing fifteen miles that evening, but it is always difficult to make a good start, and various hindrances delayed us, such as a ferry-boat with no ferryman, and the boat on the wrong side of the river. After a little time a woman came slowly down to the ferry and got into the boat, so our men exhorted her to pull herself across by means of the rope; this, however, she declined to do, and sat patiently waiting for some one else to come and take her across. It was only when we saw her close at hand that we discovered she was blind, so probably that had made her afraid of crossing alone. We became very impatient as time went on and no one appeared; I urged our men to ford the stream higher up, which was evidently a frequented route. However, they were too timorous, and were afraid of trying an unknown path, so we[115] lost much valuable time. It was only at the close of our journey that we learned that none of the men had traversed any part of our route previously; naturally the result was that they constantly made mistakes and took us out of the direct route. At last, just as we were beginning to despair, some one arrived who towed the ferry-boat over the river, and we set off across some ploughed fields towards the foot of the hills. It was dusk when we reached a village which our men said was the halting-place, and only next day we discovered that they had stopped three miles short of the right stage. We were shown into a small room about twelve feet square, from which the women of the house were ejected though their clothing draped the walls, and big chests further diminished our space. All Korean houses have a small platform outside them, either planking or made of dried mud, on which the shoes are left before any one enters. The floors are heated from below and covered with matting, so that chairs are considered unnecessary, and the Koreans enjoy the heat which penetrates through the bedding on which they lie at nights. We found it decidedly trying, despite having the door open and cots to sleep on; but we were delighted to find the houses so much cleaner than we expected. On the whole they look unquestionably cleaner in the country villages than in the corresponding ones at home. It was a little difficult to sleep, what with the heat and the noise, for the men require two hours to get up and breakfast, and we were off by 6 o’clock.

[116]

The second day we travelled mostly parallel with the seashore, and got more accustomed to riding our steeds. It was a perfect day with radiant sunshine, and one received an impression of universal content and comfort. The people looked for the most part respectably dressed and housed, and “every prospect pleased.” The villages seemed well supplied with cattle, pigs, fowls, and firewood, and within the houses were goodly array of bowls and brass utensils brilliantly polished. When we stopped at midday the horses were unloaded and given a hot sort of bran mash. The Korean pony is a hardy creature, capable of great labour and wonderfully sure-footed, but he requires three hot meals per day, that is to say, a large quantity of hot water with more or less of boiled beans and rice chaff in it. He appears to be eating all night long except when he is fighting his next-door neighbour. His mapoo or groom brushes him assiduously with a little round brush before loading, though it never has any visible effect on the beast’s coat—a more unkempt-looking animal is not to be found anywhere. The stable and kitchen of Korean inns seem to consist in a single room, one wall having a long row of stoves so that various big pans can be cooking at the same time. The chimney of a house is generally quite detached from the building, for it is connected with flues which underlie the whole house, heating every room (see illustration, p. 10). At meal-times the men each had a little round table, about four inches in diameter, on which were a large brass bowl of rice,[117] another of water, and two or three small earthenware dishes of vegetable, or fish, or other condiments. These little tables are very neat, and the food attractively served. The Koreans required two hours always at midday, for the men lie down and go to sleep after they have eaten.

Our way led us up hill and down dale, and in the course of the day we walked down five precipitous hills, on two of which there were large gangs of navvies making the road. They use a peculiar spade with a long handle, partly shod at the spatula-shaped end with iron, to which was attached a rope on each side worked by separate individuals, so that it required three men to wield it. Everywhere the country was being prepared for the crops. The rice fields seemed to occupy the main part of the land under cultivation, and were being ploughed by cattle. None of the ground was pasture land—we have not seen a single sheep since we came to Korea; there were some flocks of goats to be seen from the railway, but no other animals grazing. The cattle are singularly fine, but are only used in agriculture and as beasts of burden; the loads of wood that they carry are so large that hardly more of the beast is to be seen than the legs. The same may be said of the loads carried by men and boys.

We were delighted by the wild flowers just coming into blossom—hepaticas of shades varying from purest white to deep blue; large round-faced yellow heartsease; various colours of violets, and the sweetest large white ones; deep-red hairy anemones, and white crocus.

[118]

As we had only come twelve instead of fifteen miles the previous night we decided that we must make it up, or the other stages arranged would be impossible, but at such a suggestion our men looked black and greatly demurred. They said thirty-seven miles was too long a journey; and when we came to a village nestling under the slope of a hill covered with fine pine-trees in which numbers of herons were clamorously preparing to roost, we were obliged to admit that it was no wonder the men were anxious to stop there. The place was thoroughly picturesque and showed signs of activity; there was even a police officer standing near the invariable notice board which adorns every village in Korea since the Japanese occupation. We pushed on and only stopped a moment to sketch a particularly good specimen of devil posts, of which we had seen numbers on the road. It is considered meritorious to add a stone to one of these wayside heaps, which takes the place of shrines. We spent the night at a small village, only arriving at dusk after thirteen and a half hours’ travelling; and we were not sorry to tumble into our cots after a short meal, to put out our lights, and so escape the curiosity of the natives, which we find a great trial. It is well-nigh impossible to shut the doors for more than a few minutes, or you feel asphyxiated, and it is only when the light is out that the eager villagers cease to gaze. One was reduced to the necessity of washing in the dark or getting up in the middle of the night to do it.

[119]

The third day’s journey began under a grey and uncertain-looking sky, but the sun shone out at intervals as we made our way along the seashore. My guide insisted I should ride with a foot on each side of my good beast’s neck, but that brought disaster, for it meant nothing to cling to, so a sudden spring forward of the beast, resultant on an unseen prod in the back, landed me promptly in the dust. My mapoo tried to break the fall, but only succeeded in getting a blow on his mouth. Seeing I was not seriously damaged he made a pitiable appeal to my sympathy, opening a wide mouth in which I expected to see several teeth lying about. There was no sign of disaster except a few drops of blood, which seemed to distress him acutely, but the other men all roared with laughter and told him to wash in the stream close by. He didn’t cease being sorry for himself for quite a long while, and the weird songs with which he had previously beguiled the road ceased for half a day. We passed many small fishing hamlets, and were interested to see what a variety of fish the women had in their baskets, of which many were unknown to us. Flounders seem quite common, and in Seoul we noticed much larger herrings than any seen at home; all fish is much more expensive there than in London, owing to the Japanese monopoly, but happily for the little villages, they are so far beyond the beat of the foreigner that they are left unmolested; indeed we saw no Japanese after leaving Wonsan till that afternoon, when we were astonished at the sound[120] of a siren, and turning a corner came into an exquisite little land-locked harbour, evidently a naval base, and completely concealed from the sea. Numbers of sea-gulls and oyster-catchers were disporting themselves in the shallow basin leading from it, but our attention was riveted on the boats where gun practice was going on, though it sounded muffled.

The village of Tschagu-Tschiendogu (accordingly to the spelling in our German map) boasts of a Japanese post-office, and a Japanese woman was trotting along with a baby on her back. Passing through it we plodded through deep silver sand for some distance before turning inland, but we had a long way still to go to reach the secluded monastery, which was our resting-place for the night. We wound in among the precipitous mountains of granite formation. The rocks stood out like mammoth beasts in all sorts of strange shapes, and they looked black and forbidding in the gloom. A green serpent mottled with black gave our men quite a fright, and they continually asked the way, getting not much enlightenment. At last we penetrated into an ideal valley with cliffs towering steeply upwards to a considerable height, and showing the jagged outlines which have given the Diamond Mountains their name. The narrow track changed into a broad well-kept road, leading through a pine forest, and we had not gone more than a mile or so when we met a party of monks taking their evening stroll. The youthful looking abbot wore a chain which distinguished him from[121] the rest, and he stepped forward, bowing politely. It was rather difficult to know how next to proceed, as none of the party seemed to understand English or Chinese; however, Mr. Chiao at once began a conversation by writing on the ground and asking if we could receive accommodation for the night. The request was readily granted, and the party of monks escorted us back.

As we approached the monastery there was a small open space by the roadside in which were stone vases and tablets, but with the exception of that and the avenue there was no sign to mark the neighbourhood of the buildings. They were situated up a short path at right angles to the road, and were by no means impressive. The temple stood slightly to the rear, and we were taken to a series of rooms opening on to a raised terrace, and ushered into the central one, where a Buddha occupied the post of honour. A screen was produced to divide off a part of the room for us, and the monks arranged themselves all round to watch proceedings, namely, the cooking of our supper. One of them wrote an inquiry whether we were “Jesus missionaries,” another brought us a Japanese-English primer, and said a few sentences which he had learned fairly accurately, but could not understand anything we said.

While we had our supper in one part of the room some monks had theirs in another, and it became obvious that we should have no privacy, so we had our things removed to a small room which had been[122] allotted to Mr. Chiao, which was very hot but clean, and which possessed some rings on the door that we could padlock and yet get fresh air. Mr. Chiao was kept busy writing for a long time, and we begged him to find out what they considered the best route to Seoul. However, they said that none of their number had ever been there, and that the monastery to which we proposed going next day was forty miles distant over a lofty pass, so we had to give it up. We were glad to have Mr. Chiao sleeping in the verandah just outside our door to guard us. They showed the rapacity which is said to characterise the Buddhist monks in Korea, and we heard none too good an account of them. The night stillness was only disturbed by the croaking of frogs in quite a different tongue from that of European ones, and the periodic beating of the fish gong which betokens the hour of prayer.

In the morning we were up betimes and off before 6 o’clock; already the monks were busy outside spreading great heaps of grain on matting, perhaps in preparation for sowing. It was a perfect morning as we wended our way down the valley for about three miles of the same way we had come the night before, and soon we left the lovely valley behind us. Our pathway was full of funny little green frogs spotted with black, and with their underside brilliant scarlet. Heavy clouds hung over the precipitous ravine through which lay our way, and we soon outdistanced our ponies as we tramped over a rough path surrounded[123] by most fascinating flowers. Besides those mentioned above there were glades full of large cyclamen, white crocus and wood anemones, purple iris, saxifrage, &c.

Lilies of the valley and strawberry leaves showed promise of future beauty, and many kinds of ferns were beginning to unfold their fronds. Pheasants and wood-pigeons were calling from the rocks, and many birds trying their notes in a tentative way. Chipmunks sat up eyeing us with great unconcern, and the treasures of the woods seemed limitless. A babbling brook kept us in constant temptation as our path crossed and recrossed it, and before we reached the top we passed through more than one drift of snow. The views were wonderful, but we could have seen them better by travelling in the opposite direction, and one of the great charms in that case is the way that the traveller suddenly gets a view of the distant sea as he climbs over the summit of the pass. We were three hours climbing up, for the ascent is very stiff, but the descent is much more gradual, and we were glad to be able to mount our beasts, for the midday halt only came after a stage of seven hours. Brilliant gleams of sunshine occasionally burst forth, but the clouds blew up for rain, and we were thankful to reach our resting-place at night before the storm broke. We only managed 90 li (27 miles) in eleven hours, and on our arrival we were surprised and provoked to find in the little village a Japanese encampment, and officers occupying the best inn. After a[124] slight demur we were taken in, and were soon after discussing a light meal, when the door was thrust rudely open, and a Japanese soldier prepared to watch us have it. As he declined to take our hint to go, it became necessary to shut the door in his face. The rain fell heavily in the night, and the wind blew, but a dark morning was a prelude to a fine day.

We started late next morning, and only got as far as the end of the village when two Japanese officers, who seemed to be superintending the building of a house, stopped us and inquired our destination. They went into long explanations in writing on the ground with Mr. Chiao. They said there was a much better road than the one we were on, and that by it the distance was only 80 li. They spoke a few words of English, and we hoped that they had no ulterior object in sending us the other way, as it proved an execrable road and at least 110 li as to distance. We soon found ourselves going up another pass, but not nearly so long and arduous as the last. The flowers were not so numerous, and we found nothing much of fresh interest. Swallow-tails and butterflies of various colours flitted about the path, and the panoramic view as we gained the summit was fine, showing what a land of hills this is. As we descended into the valleys we found them scantily populated and cultivated, but the singular number of streams and brooks kept many grinding-mills at work. The commonest kind of mill is worked by a runnel of water discharging itself into a wooden cradle; when this is full it descends and[125] empties itself, then rises again, bringing down its other end, as a hammer on the grain beneath. The hammer is inside a little round hut with a pointed roof thatched with straw. Others of the mills are worked by wheels, and there is a constant sound of groaning and hammering in every valley. Ploughing and sowing go on simultaneously, and this requires a gang of from four to six men; they work on a cooperative system, and one man treads along the newly-turned furrow, with bare feet, widening it out, and dropping in the grain and fertiliser mixed, while another follows to cover it with soil, and it is finally stamped down by yet another man. The birds have a poor chance of getting any grain. Some fresh ground was being brought under cultivation by having the brushwood on it burnt and then being ploughed, but to judge from appearances there is no little ground still left waste, which would be cultivated if, for example, it were in Chinese hands. The Koreans take life much more easily, and there is none of the elaborate care and use of materials which are such a striking feature of Chinese industry.

It was only after a somewhat prolonged midday halt that we made the trying discovery that we still had fifteen miles to travel to Tschang Do, where we joined the main road, and meanwhile it became darker and darker. Happily later on the moon shone out brightly and illumined us across a barren moor. Passengers were few and far between, but a couple of men came along silently carrying a white swathed[126] corpse on a stretcher. Our own party had fallen silent, for we were tired and disappointed; the gloom prevented our seeing the steepness of some of the descents, but we clung desperately to our steeds, for we were too weary to walk. At last we came into a high road, which proved to be the main road running from Seoul to Wonsan, and on this it was easy travelling. Few gleams of light were to be seen in the village, but the inhabitants had not gone to rest, so our men set about finding quarters—a not altogether easy matter. While we were discussing it outside an inn, the beasts began quarrelling, and a man was sent flying headlong into the ditch by the heels of one of them. He picked himself up without any ado, and as if it were quite a matter of course. Perhaps this settled the vexed question, for we were forthwith admitted to the house, and the family turned out of a room which they allotted to our use. This sort of thing happened wherever we stayed, for apparently there are no spare rooms for travellers, and as there is no furniture in the living rooms it is not so objectionable an arrangement as it sounds. The best hats of the family are hung on the rafters, a shelf runs round the wall about two feet from the ceiling; it is full of miscellaneous objects, while the clothing of the family appears to be stored in boxes piled on one another. There is generally a door on each side of the room consisting of papered lattice work, and in the side a glass peep-hole varying in size from one to four inches.

[127]

The night passed all too soon, and we woke to the consciousness of a sharp frosty morning. As we wended our way down the valley it might easily have been midwinter. The brown hill-sides, and the brown earth and stubble thick with rime, showed no suggestion of spring, though it was nearing the end of April. On every side the pheasants were calling, and the bold fellows were hardly to be put up by a well-aimed stone from my man, but trotted unconcernedly away, as though conscious that now they are under Japanese protection. We met a man with a falcon, but even the falconer’s trade is eyed with suspicion, lest he use it as a blind. There have been several cases of poisoned pheasants noted lately in Seoul, so that it is necessary to be careful in buying them, to see that they have really been shot.

Our sixth day was again a thirteen hours’ journey, and as we sat resting by a rill of water at midday, a young mother with a baby on her back came up, beaming with eagerness to talk to us. No doubt she expected we could understand and answer, and we were doubly sorry not to be able to do so when she carefully unfolded a handkerchief and showed us her Testament and hymn book. The only possibly means of sympathy was by dumb show, and by the headings of the hymns, which were in English as well as Korean.

That evening we found our innkeeper was a Christian, by whom we were received with the utmost warm-heartedness, and every request so willingly[128] granted, that it was quite cheering after a tiring day. One of the girls had thoroughly acquired the English hand-shake, and when I stretched out a hand to shut the door, to my great surprise I found it warmly grasped instead. A little clucking on my friend’s part caused them to go out and fetch us lovely new-laid eggs, a great contrast to most of those we had been able to buy on the road, and they watched my cooking operations with lively interest. We began to feel it would be difficult to shut the door at all on their friendly faces, when an interruption came and rendered it unnecessary; this was a summons to them from the head of the house to come to family worship. First they sang a hymn (would that our good missionary friends could be content to let them sing their own tunes!)—then came Scripture reading, prayer, and the Lord’s Prayer repeated by all; I imagine that what followed next must have been exhortation and a suggestion of another hymn, but they decided not to sing it. The utmost devoutness characterised their worship, which was carried on in the adjoining room, so that we felt we were sharers in it, and it was good to be there.

We parted next morning with hearty hand-shakes, and we wished we had met with more Christian innkeepers on our journey, if this were a typical one. Just as we were starting a nice-looking young girl showed us her Bible with great pride, and I found that she could write quite well. Education seems to be almost entirely neglected in the country districts,[129] and we have only passed one school so far as we know during our eight days’ journey. The road continued excellent, but always winds through narrow valleys and over ridges into other valleys, showing how large a part of the country is uninhabited. The hill-sides are only used as cemeteries and for producing firewood. Until we reached the high road at the end of our fifth day’s journey we met no ponies and only few pedlars; after that there were many people and animals. The pedlars seem to carry mainly cotton goods (“superior sheeting K K K” being much to the fore), summer hats, umbrellas, haberdashery, mirrors, matches, and cigarettes. The people have little money, and the things they use are of the cheapest.

Shortly after starting we met three mounted soldiers, evidently the military escort of a weary-looking Westerner seated in a ricksha, followed by another ricksha in which was seated a Korean in pale blue attire. This was the only Westerner we met during our eight days’ journey, and from this time onward we occasionally met a ricksha, though on some parts of the road it looks quite impossible for them to travel. For a distance of perhaps twenty miles the road has been planted on both sides with twigs at a distance of about a foot from one another. They look unpromising, but we were assured that they are likely to grow all right, in which case they will convert the dull road in the course of a few years to a pleasant shady avenue. Towards dusk we came[130] to Po Chan, a Japanese military outpost. It struck us that this was probably the last opportunity of sending a telegram to announce our return to Seoul, so we at once dismounted at the telegraph office. Almost everywhere the one notice up in English is “Post—Telegraph,” but here it was in Japanese. When our wishes, however, had been explained by Mr. Chiao in writing, a telegraph form entirely made out in English was produced and the message written. It seemed such a simple matter to send it, that we were astonished at the amount of correspondence it entailed. Our names, destinations, ages, &c. &c. were demanded by the military authorities, and the little job took at least twenty minutes. At last we got away and it was quite dark before we reached our destination.

We sighed for our friendly hosts of the night before, for this time we encountered a horde of inquisitive people, who allowed us no peace; in vain we closed three doors out of the four which led from one tiny room eighteen feet square, and the paper on them was soon in shreds. At last we were driven to distraction, and closed all the peep-holes by curtains, preferring to be stifled than to endure the people any longer.

The eighth and last morning of our journey dawned grey and unpromising. How often have we sighed for our comfortable Chinese travelling chairs, never more than as the weary hours wore slowly away under a drizzling rain. For the last few days[131] we had seen scarcely a flower and heard few birds; the dear larks were silent, and the passengers hurried along under umbrellas, waterproof-covered hats, and an occasional grass coat. The villages were more numerous, and wonderful groups of devil posts, ten or twelve in a row, faced each other at each end of them; many of these looked comparatively new, and were painted brick-red and green, with white markings. A noticeable feature of Korea is the absence of temples, and the disrepair of the shrines; we never saw any sign of worship by the people at these wayside shrines. They are, many of them, simply empty huts, or have a little writing on the walls, and occasionally a picture. On sacred trees strips of paper are hung, and the passer-by, if devout, adds a stone to the heap round its roots.

We donned our shilling paper coats and found them an admirable protection from the rain, but we must have been a funny sight. As we rode along we came to a Japanese regiment on the march, headed by its officers in military capes. One of the officers, despite the rain, threw his cape back in a négligé way before he met us, so that a dazzling row of decorations should not pass unobserved. Certainly his appearance was in striking contrast to ours.

We entered the city of Seoul from the north by a fine old gateway, the whole scene being most picturesque. I returned to sketch it the following day.

The impression of the country people gained by our trip was that they were not particularly friendly, but[132] thoroughly inquisitive; it looked as if there were little extreme poverty, but a general air of comfort seemed to prevail everywhere. The village street is swept daily, so that in the early morning there is a pleasant look of tidiness about it. The cattle are sleek and well cared for, and even the dogs have a prosperous air.

Any one thinking of visiting the Diamond Mountains would do well to try and secure a competent Korean to go with them, who would be able to secure the daily fowl for dinner of which we heard, but which we never met, and to procure any other requisite. We saw no cultivation of vegetables, except small plots of onions, so that we had to rely entirely on the stores that we took with us for everything except eggs. We were told (too late) that a guide may easily be heard of at the Y.M.C.A. in Seoul. As to means of transit—there are only three; a pony, but let me add a warning on this score, namely, that one gets deadly tired of its slow walk; a native chair, consisting of a square box like an Indian dhoolie, with carriers who groan all the time; and shanks’s pony, which in the mountains is the only pleasant one. Residents in Korea have their own carrying chairs, but these are not to be hired. As regards the time of year most suitable for travelling in Korea, May is the most beautiful, or early autumn we were told, but in case of the former, mosquito curtains are a necessity. We found winter clothing requisite for April; thick tweeds and fur coat were none too warm.

We had been told that the country districts were[133] quite unsafe on account of Japanese vagrants, but we saw nothing of them, and as far as we could judge there is excellent order everywhere. Although Mr. Chiao was unable to communicate directly with the Koreans, his presence was of undoubted value to us in more ways than one. It lent prestige to our small party, for the Koreans hold the Chinese in great respect; and for them to see such a man as Mr. Chiao in a subordinate position to us, was equivalent to raising us to high rank.

The slowness and discomfort of the journey from Manchuria by railway to Seoul determined us to take another route on our return, and as there was a boat going from Chemulpo to Dalny about the time we wanted to start we decided to take it. We booked our places in good time, paid for tickets, and the agent promised to wire at once to Yokohama to have the berths reserved for us. On our return to Seoul, however, after our trip across the country, we saw that another steamer was advertised to sail the day following the one for which we had booked. This was not only a larger steamer, but also boasted European food, instead of Japanese, no small matter when one is sea-sick. We at once decided to change our tickets if possible, and went to the agent from whom they had been obtained. He said it was impossible to make any alteration as the berths had been already secured on the other steamer; however, after some demur, he telephoned to the agent at Chemulpo to ascertain what answer he had received from Yokohama. The agent declared that he had never been asked to secure any berths, and that none[135] had been reserved. This made the way plain for us, and we were glad for once of the hopelessly unbusinesslike habits prevailing in Korea. I have related this incident to show how difficult it is to travel comfortably; for our friends said that ours was no uncommon experience, and that various of their friends, with places already engaged, had gone to take their boat at Chemulpo, as we should have done, and found that all the berths were full, so that they were obliged to return to Seoul and wait for the next. As boats only run to Dalny once in three or four weeks this is a serious matter.

We started in the early afternoon and found a large crowd of passengers waiting to go by the train; it duly came into the station, and the luggage was put in the van, but the passengers were kept cooped up within railings for fifteen minutes, actually to within five minutes of the starting of the train. When they were at last allowed on the platform there was a perfect stampede, and the discovery was made that there were no first-class carriages, though we and other passengers had first-class tickets. The officials were applied to, but they said if we wanted first-class accommodation we could wait a couple of hours and take the next train. We were not sorry when our short journey of one and three quarter hours came to an end to think that it was our last experience of Korean railways. On arrival at Chemulpo we passed through a door labelled “wicket,” which was surely strangely unlike the[136] wicket gate with which we are all so familiar by name from the days of our childhood, though we certainly felt like pilgrims.

Chemulpo is a cosmopolitan sort of place and has an unenviable reputation, but it has certain charming features. The first is that there is always a cool breeze; the second is that it extends up a hill-side, and from the British Consulate, perched on the edge of the cliff, there is a fine view over the harbour. From there a group of thrilled spectators watched the dramatic opening of the war between Russia and Japan. They saw the two gallant Russian warships steam out of the inner bay to meet the Japanese fleet and certain destruction. Whatever may be thought of the action, no one can fail to admire the unflinching courage—so characteristic of both armies—which dictated it.

As we climbed up the hill we saw towering above us a fine red church belonging to the Roman Catholics, and we reached the mission hospital of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. No one who is unacquainted with Eastern seaports can understand the arduous character of the work carried on by the tiny handful of workers stationed at such places; but where could there be a greater need of that Christian demonstration which a hospital affords? Only once a month an ordained clergyman comes down to take the services; at other times the doctor has to conduct them, as well as attend to all the medical work. It is difficult for him to get an[137] occasional holiday of even a couple of days, for at the present time the medical work among the Koreans has not progressed far in the training of assistants. The hospital is small and lacking many of the things which our ordinary general practitioners would consider essential to a hospital, but the results are nevertheless satisfactory.

As we left the doctor’s house we found that a boatman had dogged our steps, and been waiting a couple of hours to secure possible passengers on the way to the S.S. Santo Maru, for he had no doubt seen Mr. Chiao taking our luggage from the station to the ship. We could not resist such pertinacity, and after some half-hour’s rowing in his sampan, we reached the outer harbour where the Santo Maru lay.

Next morning at 5 A.M. punctually we started for Dalny in heavy rain, which thickened into fog in the course of the day. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha is at present the best Japanese line of steamers, and has ships plying all round the world. The accommodation was quite comfortable, and the staff, from the captain downwards, most kind and polite to the passengers. There was an excellent Chinese chef on board, and he prepared an elaborate Sunday dinner for the thirteen passengers—composed of Americans, Spaniards, Australians, and ourselves—such as would have been more suitable for Christmas Day; the menu included roast beef, turkey, and plum-pudding. Tiny birds kept haunting the ship all day long, so tame that they alighted on people’s shoulders, and[138] sea swallows came darting into the saloon during dinner.

We were grateful for a smooth sea, even though the fog delayed our passage somewhat, and we only reached Dalny twenty-five hours after leaving Chemulpo. The rain was gone, and was followed by “clear shining” as we drew up beside the wharf. The agent of the pleasant Yamato hotel took charge of our things, and put us into a comfortable little carriage with india-rubber tyres in which we drove through the town. How delightful it is after roughing it to meet once again such simple home comforts (too simple even to be noticed at home), and to drive over well-made roads! Dalny, or Dairen as it is called by the Japanese, is pre-eminently a new town, full of handsome buildings, from the Sailors’ Rest to the Yokohama Specie Bank, situated in wide, well-made roads, and showing plain proof of the nascent prosperity of the place. The shops are not quite up to what might be expected, but that is only a matter of time, and well-known firms such as Butterfield and Swire, and Samuel Macgregor & Co. are already established there. Dalny is an interesting and remarkable place. Ten years ago it did not exist, but was merely a dream in some Russian brain; and how that brain conceived it, it is hard to imagine. Dalny lies at the base of the Liaotong Peninsula, a rocky, barren spot without any shelter from the tempests; but having the great advantage over its nearest neighbouring seaport, Newchwang, of being open all[139] the year round, whereas Newchwang is ice-bound four months in the winter. This is the reason why Russia was willing to pour out money like water to convert the wilderness into a great commercial port at the southern terminus of the railway line. The harbour alone has been an enormous expense, for the bank is very shelving, and there are now dry docks, moles, breakwaters, and warehouses, with a vast amount of space available for the requisites for that commerce which Russia expected to obtain. But it is not Russia, but Japan, who is now the owner of Dalny; it is Japanese ships that ply between China, Korea, and Japan, not to mention the trade with more distant countries, which is steadily growing. As it is the only port north of Hong Kong where large steamers can conveniently discharge their cargoes, it ought to have good prospects, and the increasing exports from Manchuria are certain to pass through it.

Not only did Russia expend its money upon making Dalny a fine port, but also in making it a fine city and pleasant to live in. The residential quarter has been hewn out of the hill-side for about a couple of miles, and handsomely laid out, while a beautiful shady drive of seven or eight miles leads to the seashore facing the ocean.

The town is full of little carriages and rickshas, and a network of trams takes the passenger for an hour’s drive for the lordly sum of twopence, first class, and a penny farthing second class. As we drove in a tram to Chinatown in order to view the outskirts, we saw[140] the beginnings of a park, a golf course, a baseball ground, a chrysanthemum garden, and various other things, but more amusing were the little bazaars and shops with their English notices—“To sell Flesh,” “Boots and Shoesmakea,” “High Barber,” “Royal House Hair Cutting,” &c. &c. English is the one European language which makes its way into every corner of the earth, and will with ever-increasing rapidity tend to become the universal means of communication. As an instance of this fact, the Chinese Government has just issued an order that henceforth English is to be the language in which science shall be taught throughout the Chinese Empire. This will, I fear, be a severe blow to our German friends, who were confidently expecting China to follow the example of Japan and take German as the scientific medium of instruction.

We left Dalny by the evening train for Liao Yang, en route for Ashiho, which forms the subject of the next chapter.

As we journeyed northward once more the cold steadily increased, and a biting wind found its way even into the railway carriages. At Kharbin a perfect blizzard had been blowing the previous day, and as it happened to be the Russian Easter, banks were closed and the tickets for the Russian State express train were not to be purchased. We discovered that the train service was all to be changed the next day, May 1st, and no time-tables were obtainable. The British Consul kindly promised to get our tickets on the Monday, and ascertained that we could join the express at Ashiho, a few stations down the Vladivostock line, where we were going to spend the week end.

We reached Ashiho about 9 o’clock, and set out for our destination in a droshky. It was a most perilous drive in the dark, for the roads—or what pass muster as roads—were in the worst possible condition; the spring thaw had set in, and the surface of the ground was a hopeless quagmire destined to last until there should be sufficient sunshine to dry it, for the wet was unable to penetrate the still frozen earth. Our[142] friends at Hulan had set out that morning to meet us at Kharbin. After a long weary walk in a snowstorm they found the Kharbin steamer on the Sungari River crowded with passengers. An hour’s wait in a piercing wind was followed by the information that it was quite uncertain whether the boat would go at all that day, so they gave it up in despair and returned home. Practically speaking all traffic is stopped on the country roads at this time of the year, and those who walk must be prepared to wade knee deep in black mud to reach their destination. We had no catastrophe during our half-hour’s drive, but it was more by good luck than anything else.

Ashiho is rather a dull Chinese town with the usual Russian settlement round the railway station, which is about half a mile outside the gates. The Russians have insisted on the town being lighted at nights, but there is not more than enough light to show the darkness. A red light on the top of a lofty pole is the sign of public baths, which seemed to be the scene of much activity. The Russian droshky, with Chinese drivers, is apparently quite an institution there, but one wonders how they can make a living in such a locality. The town boasts a sugar factory, but owing to a bad beetroot season it was closed. A small community of Scotch missionaries is working there, and when they have got a new hospital and better premises, there is every prospect of greater growth in the work. The lady doctor, though only recently from home, and still in the first stages of[143] learning the language, had over sixty patients waiting to see her, and the people seem more willing here than elsewhere to send for her in midwifery cases. As she is the only doctor, she has one day a week for men patients. The missionary premises are deplorable; if only some of the home committee could have enjoyed our quarters and heard the walls which enclose the compound falling down during the night, they would see the need for haste in building new ones. The girls’ school was being carried on under difficulties that would daunt any but the most resolute, but the workers are Scotch, and have learnt to laugh at difficulties. Less than two years ago one of the ladies was itinerating in the country, accompanied by a Biblewoman, when she was suddenly attacked by a party of mounted brigands. They treated her with considerable roughness, robbing not only her but also the Biblewoman and the carter of all that they considered worth stealing—money, watches, clothes, and food. Amongst other things they took her eiderdown—for this took place in the cold weather—but the Biblewoman had the happy inspiration to tell the robbers that it only contained feathers (which they utterly scorned), so they threw it away. They only left her one cent in money (evidently they had a sense of humour), and decamped somewhat hurriedly on seeing a party of horsemen appear in the distance, whom they took for soldiers.

There is plenty of ground belonging to the mission, but, as usual, funds for building are not forthcoming.[144] It seems a pity that the home churches should keep on sending out workers without the requisite equipment to carry on their work. At home one frequently hears of the luxury in which missionaries live, but in my fairly considerable experience of mission houses, I have never met a single one where this is the case, and rarely (except in the case of American missions) have I been where the work has not been seriously hindered for the lack of funds. Most missionaries are driven by the necessities of their work to eke out by contributions from their own meagre salaries the insufficient funds provided from home. Many are consequently unable to afford to have newspapers and other literature sent out regularly, and the thoughtless kindness of their supporters does not supply them with anything beyond religious periodicals and books. The postage of papers and books is only the same as at home, and parcels weighing not more than 11 lb. can now be sent to China by post for the small sum of 2s. 11d., so there is no reason why the missionary’s life should not be occasionally brightened by a judicious present from the home country.

The one drawback to the position of the mission premises at Ashiho is that they are so near the wall beside the East gate, outside which is the public execution ground, and the gruesome procession to it passes alongside the mission houses. Shortly before our visit there had been executions twice in one week—the first time two men, and the second time four men were killed by strangulation.

[145]

Near the mission also there is a pretty Mohammedan mosque, built exactly like a Buddhist or Taoist temple, which provides schools for boys and girls. The girls’ school is a recent institution, probably in imitation of the mission one, and is evidently at all events a numerical success, for a good number of girls filed out on Sunday afternoon as we happened to be passing. The type of face of many of the boys struck us as particularly Semitic, and the Chinese here habitually call them Jews. There is a large proportion of butchers among the Mohammedans, as is usually the case in China, and this is a boon to Europeans, for it is only the Mohammedans who kill beef, and they are particular about the healthiness of the beasts. The Moslems in China do not attempt to proselytise openly, and they adhere less rigidly than elsewhere to their religious observances. They conform outwardly as much as possible to Chinese customs in order to escape notice, but they are no negligible quantity among the myriads of that land, for they number at least twenty millions. The Mohammedans entered China in A.D. 755 by the regular trade route through Central Asia, and even earlier (in 628) according to Chinese Mohammedan tradition they are said to have sent the prophet’s uncle as envoy to the Chinese court. The proselytising of the Chinese was as peaceful as that of the Indians was the reverse. It was mainly achieved by Moslem traders and artisans, following in the wake of Genghiz Khan and Kubla Khan’s conquests. They married Chinese women, and their[146] children all became Moslems; they adopted large numbers of other children in famine times in order to bring them up in the Faith, and thus they have steadily but unobtrusively grown in numbers.

In past times there have been terrible massacres of the Mohammedans by the Chinese whenever they have made any attempt to withstand Chinese customs, which is probably the reason one hears so little of them nowadays, but they show a quiet tenacity in sticking to their religion, which is characteristic of Mohammedanism in every land. It was in a vain endeavour to reach them that the great Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, died off the coast of China. Up to the present time there has been no special mission work amongst the Mohammedans in China.

My sketch of the Mohammedan mosque at Ashiho was done under considerable difficulties, for the boys had just come out of school, and would jostle up and down, and round about me on the mound of earth where I was sitting, raising such a dust that at last I was driven defeated from the field. Though it was the first of May the scene was a winter one, and we longed and longed for spring to arrive.

On sending to the station to inquire what time our train left in the evening, they declared there was no train at all, and that the date of the weekly express from Vladivostock had been changed from Monday to Sunday. We felt so convinced that this was a mistake, having inquired about it at Kharbin[147] only two days previously, that we went down to the station in good time for the usual 9 o’clock train, and were rewarded by learning that the hour and not the date of the train had been altered, and that it would pass through Ashiho at 10 o’clock. After waiting for an hour in the restaurant, where a party of the attendants were playing cards, the ticket office was opened, but they absolutely refused to sell tickets to us, saying that the express only stopped for half a minute, and that we could not get into it. We vainly protested that having no registered luggage we would take our chance of getting into the train, and that we must go by it, as we had the long journey to Irkutsk before us. The reiteration of this fact for about five minutes without stopping at last began to tell, and the official said he must see what small luggage we had. After due inspection he agreed to let us have tickets, but we had to pay for them from a point about fifty miles up the line, which meant twenty-one roubles instead of the four and a half we had paid on coming. The next difficulty was that the ticket office contained no change and seemed unable to get any, so we had to borrow the requisite amount from our friends. When the train did arrive each of our friends stood ready holding an article of luggage ready to hurl it into the corridor, and of course there was no difficulty in getting both our belongings and ourselves into it. We were soon comfortably established in the coupé which we were to occupy for the next two days, that is, until we[148] should reach Irkutsk, where all passengers have to change.

At Kharbin there was a hopeless scrimmage for places, as those booked in advance for passengers from the south had all been appropriated by a large party of Americans at Vladivostock, and the ladies had discreetly retired to bed. It is always asserted that there is plenty of room on the Russian State Express in contradistinction to the International Sleeping Car, and that it is unnecessary to book places in advance. Evidently this was a fallacy, for every berth was full, and it was only after long and acrimonious arguing that the officials agreed to put on an extra carriage, and a very dirty one it proved to be. Great dissatisfaction was caused by this arrangement, and we were over an hour late in starting. We had been frequently assured that we should find the State Express more comfortable than the International, but such is by no means the case. The only point in which it excels is in the smoothness of running, in every other respect it is inferior. The carriages are smaller, there is no dressing-room in the first-class coupés, there are no second-class coupés (only carriages for four people), the washing basins would not hold water, there was no soap or towel, the restaurant car was far too small, and the meals were not to the taste of any of the passengers. A piano in the restaurant does not compensate for such deficiencies.

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The railway from Kharbin passes through Manchuria in a north-westerly direction till it comes to the town of that name, where the customs examination takes place before entering Russian territory. In a magazine article recently written by a French lady, she complains of having been examined at four different places on the line, and in a very thorough manner, the sleeves of coats being ripped open, and the bedding of the sleeping car being pulled to pieces, but we saw nothing of this sort, and I think there must have been some suspicion on the part of the police. Registered luggage is a much more serious affair, and endless were the stories we heard from fellow-passengers of the losses they had sustained—one passenger had waited a whole week for his at Moscow. For those who like ourselves take all their luggage in the railway carriage, the examination was a mere farce, consisting of the verbal inquiry,[152] “Have you any spirits, tobacco, or playing cards?” to which is sometimes added a cursory examination of the bedding to see if any dutiable article has been concealed there.

It is a great convenience that passengers can take so much luggage in the carriage without inconvenience. In the Russian State Express there is not nearly so much accommodation as in the International Sleeping Cars, where there is a large recess over the door, extending above the corridor, in which there was ample room for two suit cases and two bags of bedding. Besides this there were racks for smaller objects in the other part of the carriage. The space is so considerable in the first-class carriages that the upper berth is at right angles to the lower, which is consequently very much pleasanter than when it is immediately below the other berth, leaving no space to sit upright. There is a nice dressing-room between every two coupés, where hot and cold water is laid on, and this is really an inestimable boon on a long journey. The hot water supply is somewhat variable, so we generally supplemented it by buying extra. In some of the trains no charge is made for it; in others it costs 2½d. If for no other reason than the dressing-room, I should advise all first-class passengers to go by the International rather than by the Russian State Express. One is also less worried by the official trio coming to inspect tickets. It seems odd that on all Russian trains it requires three men to fulfil so simple a duty, but no doubt it is an example of the suspiciousness which[153] seems to permeate all officialdom in this country. There is a comfortable chair and table, so that passengers can sit facing one another. This is no small convenience on so long a journey, especially when you prefer having some meals in your own carriage.

It is not only pleasanter but wiser not to have more than one solid meal a day on the journey, and we could not help being amused at the general collapse of a large number of passengers on the third day, evidently the result of imprudence in this matter. In the restaurant book of food (I can call it by no other name) there was a page of “fasting dishes” which was, I fear, neglected. We found that a judiciously stocked luncheon basket, added to the facilities for securing scalded milk, bread, excellent butter, and eggs, made it unnecessary to spend much time in the restaurant car. This was not so important in the International Sleeping Car as in the Russian State Express, for although the dining-car was atrociously hot and crowded, the meals were served promptly, but in the latter we were an hour and a half having a lunch of five courses, so we determined after that experience to order our meal in advance and à la carte. By so doing we saved a great deal of time, but we were obliged to have it at an unseasonable hour. That did not matter much, as we altered our hours in accordance with the “Daylight Saving Bill,” and so profited in various ways. In order to have comfortable time for washing, without having other people hammering on the door, it was most convenient to rise at 5 o’clock, and it was equally convenient to go[154] to bed as soon as it was dark, because all Russian trains economise in light. Even a first-class carriage has only a single candle for all illumination, and that is placed in a lantern above the door, so that it only serves to reveal the darkness.

Leaving Manchuria we passed into the Trans-Baikal province, at the western side of which lies Lake Baikal, and to our no small surprise and disappointment, winter still reigned supreme. Beautiful forests of birch and pine trees broke the monotony of the plains, and drifts of snow still lingered in the hollows, where sun or wind had failed to chase it. It was, of course, very different from when we crossed it in February, with the thermometer at thirty degrees below zero, but we still found winter clothing necessary, and were bitterly disappointed to see none of the lovely flowers which transform the dreary plains into flower gardens. We had been told that the delphiniums were a dream of beauty, but we saw none, and I imagine the end of May or beginning of June would be a much better time to travel across Siberia, in spite of the fact that the trains are then crowded, and it is necessary to secure seats months beforehand, or trust to getting one that accidentally falls vacant nearer the time.

Lake Baikal was still completely frost-bound, and looked beautiful glittering in the morning sunlight, with snow-capped mountains enclosing it on every side. The only disappointment about Lake Baikal is that the mountains are too distant to look really grand and[155] awe-inspiring. The steamer which plies on the lake during the summer from Baikal station was still lying close alongside it. Turning westward almost immediately after leaving it, the railway line follows the course of the river Angara for about one and a half hours, till it reaches Irkutsk, the present seat of government.

Irkutsk was a trading town founded in 1652, but was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1879. It is striking in appearance as one approaches it by the long railway bridge across the river, and is finely situated, with an imposing railway station. As we crossed the bridge we saw the fine bridge of boats used in summer still lying alongside the bank in its winter quarters, for large masses of loose ice floated past, blocking the river. But although Irkutsk has a certain comeliness of appearance, and is the centre of intellectual activity in Siberia, it is not altogether a desirable place to live in, for not only is the climate trying, but report says that it is imprudent for any one to go about unarmed. The great prisons in the neighbourhood of Irkutsk have for generations been the place where the worst criminals of the Empire, as well as political exiles have been sent, and when their term of service has expired they are let loose on the community, the only regulation being that they shall remain there. The result is that the present population contains not only the present released convicts, but also a considerable number of the descendents of former convicts of the worst type.

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Irkutsk is in the centre of the gold district, which attracts also a somewhat undesirable class of people. It is not, I think, generally known what a large quantity of gold is found in Siberia, but about five millions worth is annually sent into Russia. This by no means represents all that is found, although the Government requires that it should all pass through Irkutsk, and thence be forwarded to Russia. Smuggling is reported to be extensively carried on, and a considerable Chinese population are credited with the bulk of it. The working of the gold diggings is said by experts to be amazingly primitive. Large fortunes are both made and squandered in Irkutsk. Not only gold but tea is a great source of wealth, although the trade in the latter is by no means so great as it used to be in the old caravan days. At the present time by far the largest quantity of it is sent round by sea; but there are still many Russians who believe that the flavour of the tea is spoilt by sea air, so that the demand for caravan tea continues. It is said that wealth in Irkutsk is estimated by a man’s furs and by a woman’s furs and jewels. Curiously enough Sunday labour is entirely prohibited in this town, and fine and imprisonment may follow the breaking of the law with regard to buying and selling. Trade is greatly hampered throughout the Russian Empire by the corruption of officials, of whom there are an incalculable number; and it is the Jews who form the most successful part of the trading community. There is always a long[157] halt at Irkutsk station, varying from one and a half to two and a half hours, for passengers have to change trains on account of the difference of the line in gauge, and when travelling by the Russian State Express it is necessary to have tickets visé-ed and fresh places allotted. On the International you are saved this because the places are numbered and passengers are required to keep the same number in both trains, so there is no confusion in having the luggage transferred from one to the other. Having to get fresh ones was decidedly tiresome, as there seemed to be no method in the madness of the officials, their knowledge of other languages than their own was almost nil, and their slowness phenomenal. One of our English fellow-passengers seemed to have a great deal to say, and knew no Russian, so he had secured the services of a Chinese waiter from the restaurant car who acted as interpreter with complete success. I do not think I am wrong in saying that the issuing of fresh tickets took more than three-quarters of an hour, and confusion reigned in the train for more than double the time.

During the first two days of our return journey we had suffered from continual snow-storms and a leaden sky, but after leaving Irkutsk the weather improved, and the sun shone most of the time. The land is sparsely inhabited; at the close of the last century the density of population was given in the official census as two to the square mile in the province of Irkutsk. If Siberia be taken as an[158] example of the effects of land nationalisation, few people, I think, will be attracted by it; out of an area of 3,240,000,000 square miles no less than 3,104,000,000 belong to the State. There is only one province, the Amur region, in which land can be purchased. It is the Russian village communities who hold the land when it has been allotted for industrial enterprises. All along the line we were interested in seeing the colonists travelling to their various destinations; they were taken in slow trains densely packed, and when they came to the stations where they had to change they and their belongings were dumped down for an apparently indefinite number of hours on the station, and there they remained, eating and sleeping in the midst of their baggage till it was time to start afresh. There are sheds for them to be housed in when the weather prevents their being out of doors. They seemed to have practically no furniture with them, and some of them were remarkably well dressed in comparison with what one would have expected. They are all obliged to have passports just like foreigners.

Up to the year 1901 there was an average of nearly 20,000 exiles sent yearly to Siberia; many of these exiles settled down and helped to civilise the land. They founded twelve Natural History and Ethnological Museums, besides starting scientific societies. Now the Government has altered the system, and great efforts are being made to send another class of colonists, the political exiles being[159] driven to more uninhabitable regions. It seems a pity that the Russian Empire, which extends over an area of no less than one-sixth of the territorial globe, should leave this fertile land of Siberia, much of it the finest grazing ground in the world, and other parts excellent wheat-growing land, so sparsely inhabited, while it stretches envious hands into Manchuria, the land which China imperatively requires as the natural outlet for her surplus population.

At the railway stations all sorts of queer people are to be seen, the men mostly wearing bright-coloured shirts, and tall red leather, or felt boots; but the nomadic tribes of Buriats, who cultivate parts of the country with great industry and success, are not often to be seen near the railway. The Buriats on the eastern side of Lake Baikal are Buddhists, but those on the west still cling to their original religion—Shamanism. This mainly consists in the worship of gods, called “Ongons,” supposed to protect both house and property. The former are hung up in a box inside the house; the latter, along with the skins of squirrels and other small animals are in a box fastened to the top of a pole, with a little roof over it in the fields. Every man has his own Ongon as soon as he marries, and when he dies it is taken down from the pole and hung up in the woods, where it eventually rots to pieces.

In a most interesting volume the American linguist and ethnologist, Jeremiah Curtin, describes these[160] strange tribes. He tells how he witnessed the Horse Sacrifice, one of the most ancient of Mongol ceremonials, and which is still perpetuated among Buriat clans. He saw it performed in 1900 on a hill called Uhér, about seven miles from Usturdi, which is some forty miles from Irkutsk. There are fifteen large altars on the hill, on which the sacrifices are offered to the Burkans (namely the gods) of the hill. These gods include “The Lofty Clear Heaven,” “The Revered Pure Earth,” “Bull Prince Father,” “Blessed Mother Mist,” “The Creating Great One” (the hedgehog, who is considered by the Buriats to be the wisest of all deities), “Grandfather Bald Head,” “Creator of Cattle,” “Crooked Back,” &c. The different families of the first and second divisions of the clan Ashekhabat have each their own place near one or other of the altars. The leaders of the ceremony invoke all the different deities by name and in turn, while the people pray either aloud or in silence for what they want. Then the horses are killed, and after that they are rapidly skinned and dismembered, the bones being burnt in roaring fires on the fifteen altars. The flesh is boiled in iron kettles, and when it is cooked all the people stand in groups by the altars, receding and advancing towards them at intervals, and reciting the following invocation to the deities, together with any special petitions of their own.

“We pray that we may receive from you a blessing. From among fat cattle we have chosen out meat for[161] you. We have made strong tarasun (a liquor distilled from milk) for you. Let our ulus (villages) be one verst longer. Create cattle in our enclosures; under our blankets create a son; send down rain from high heaven to us; cause much grass to grow; create so much grain that sickle cannot rase it, and so much grass that scythe cannot cut it. Let no wolves out unless wolves that are toothless; and no stones unless stones without sharp corners or edges. Hover above our foreheads. Hover behind our heads. Look on us without anger. Help those of us who forget what we know. Rouse those of us who are sleeping (in spirit). In a harsh year (a year of trouble) be compassion. In a difficult year (a year of want) be kindness (in sense of help). Black spirits lead farther away from us; bright spirits lead hither, nearer; grey spirits lead farther away from us. Burkans lead hither to us. Green grass give in the mouths (of cattle). Let me walk over the first snow. If I am timid be my courage. If I am ashamed, be a proper face to me. Above be as a coverlid, below be as a felt bed to me.”—(“A Journey in Southern Siberia,” page 47.) After this prayer the worshippers all sat down in groups to eat the horse-flesh and drink tarasun, while many vultures hovered round to share the flesh. After this strange sacrifice is ended the Buriats indulge in wrestling.

At Usturdi there is a Russian Orthodox Mission Church, and the Bible Society has undertaken to publish the Gospel of St. Matthew in the Buriat[162] language. It seems strange that such uncivilised beings as those who would take part in the ceremonial described above, should be sufficiently literate to have a use for the Gospel; but it is estimated that all the Buriats in the north, and nearly all those in the south, will be able to read it. The population is about 290,000. The translation has been made by the Irkutsk Translation Committee, and is to be printed in Russ characters, as most of the Buriats are able to understand them. Mr. Curtin mentions a young Buriat whom he met as having studied six years at the Irkutsk gymnasium, and possessing a knowledge of history and science, besides being a considerable reader, so that evidently they are not uninfluenced by education.

The next province through which the railway passes is the Yenisei, which stretches right away up to the Arctic Ocean, and which at once conjures up in one’s mind visions of Merriman’s novels: it is one of the largest provinces in the empire, consisting of 987,186 square miles, but has only an average of one person to the square mile. The city of Krasnojarsk is the largest and most interesting on the railway; there are about 30,000 foreigners living in this district, most of them Tartars; it is the principal seat of Government, and lies just half-way between Moscow and Vladivostock on this wonderful railway. The whole length of the railway is 5449 miles, and with the exception of the 193 miles round Lake Baikal, it was completed in an extraordinarily short space[163] of time, between eight and nine years, at a cost of, roughly speaking, £85,000,000. It is fairly correct to say that it was built at the rate of about a mile a day. At the distance of one verst (namely, two-thirds of a mile) apart, there are guard houses all along the line, each under the care of an ex-convict, who comes out of his house to wave a green flag when the train passes, or more frequently it is a barefooted wife or daughter who does it for him. There is a fine view of Krasnoyarsk from the train as you approach it, for the line makes a wide circular sweep before crossing the River Yenisei, on which it is situated. Of all the noble rivers which flow through Siberia, the Yenisei is the greatest; it rises in the mountains of the distant Chinese province of Kobdo in Mongolia, over 3000 miles from the Arctic Sea, and makes its impetuous way through the mountains of Sagansk, then through the strange, tundra region, with its countless islands and trackless wastes—the great nesting place of myriads of migratory birds, who come there led by some marvellous instinct at the exact time of year when the snow melts, uncovering the berries which form the requisite food for the nestlings. The Yenisei is only navigable for a little over six months of the year, and the ceremony of cutting the ice, which closes its mouth on the Arctic Sea, takes place always on June 10th.

The next province on the route is that of Tomsk, but the principal town, which has the same name, lies to the north of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and is[164] only connected with it by a branch line from Taiga, the nearest point to it on the main line, which is eighty-two versts or, roughly speaking, 54 miles distant. The reason why Tomsk is not on the main line is that the city refused to bribe the surveyors and engineers who planned the route. This accounts for the fact that so many places, which might quite easily have been on the line, are more or less distant from the railway, according to their willingness to pay. It takes four hours by rail from Taiga to Tomsk. It must be most injurious to trade to have such difficulties as these, and such unnecessary ones. Tomsk boasts the only university in Siberia, but this is still incomplete, and has only about 500 students. Education has been discouraged in this as in every part of the Russian Empire, and although the money required for a university at Irkutsk was offered, the Government refused to grant permission for it to be established. The number of schools in 1901 was only 3909 for the whole of Siberia, and the scholars attending them 115,407, while the population was estimated at 5,727,090; these figures need no comment, and my authority for them is Prince Krapotkin.

The only important town in the province on the railway line is Omsk, where we learnt (by telegram) the death of the King. The news came like a thunderclap, and cast a gloom over every English person on the train. What made it doubly trying was the impossibility for weeks to come of getting any further news. The town of Omsk is on the River Irtish.[165] The number of rivers in the country adds greatly to the charm of the journey, and they have been the chief highways of the empire in the past; the bridges over them are remarkably fine. We began to rejoice in the sight of wild flowers once more, and children brought bunches of marigolds and anemones to the stations for sale, but generally they were tied up into tight little bunches without any leaves, and were quite wilted. The main occupation of some of the passengers seemed to be that of putting on fresh clothes, and showing them off at the stations where we had an opportunity at least half-a-dozen times every day of getting a brief constitutional. We learnt that passengers were allowed to visit the luggage van, as on board ship, and get out fresh supplies of dresses, but it did seem rather unnecessary, considering the amount of luggage taken in the carriages.

The next province through which the railway passes is that of Tobolsk, but it only skirts its southern border, which adjoins the steppes inhabited by Cossacks and nomadic tribes, whose caravans may be seen in the busy markets of Petropavlosk, which was founded in 1752 as a protection against the Kirghiz Cossacks. About one-third of its population is Mohammedan, and the Greek Orthodox Church has a mission in the province for them: the present staff of the mission consists of thirteen priests, twelve assistants, two deacons, and one Psalm reader. Last year they baptized eight Mohammedans. They have a very small educational work. The Greek Orthodox Church[166] has various missions scattered through Siberia, and the Russian Government does not allow any foreign ones, which seems the greater pity when it is considered how inadequate in every respect are those of the Greek Church—they only number nine. Everywhere in the cities we saw the beautiful green domes and spires of the churches, but very little is done for the religious welfare of the people in the country districts, and for the most part they are in a state of profound ignorance; religion is summed up in (α) the worship paid to the ikon, (a little coloured print of our Lord, or of the Virgin, or of a saint), which is to be found, not only in all private houses, but in every waiting-room or restaurant on the railway, and in (β) certain religious ceremonies at special times of the year, and on special occasions.

After leaving Tobolsk, the next important station passed on the line is Chéliabinsk, in the province of Orenburg, the first town over the border into Europe. The frontier between Asiatic and European Russia is crossed about 104 miles to the east of it, and is marked by an obelisk on the left hand side of the line at its highest point, which may be seen soon after leaving Kurgan. Chéliabinsk is a cosmopolitan centre; it is the real starting-point of the Trans-Siberian line, and is the junction where the line divides, the one going north to St. Petersburg, and the other west to Moscow. The Russian State Express runs once a week from each of these cities to Vladivostock, and also in the opposite direction.

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We were much pleased with the way our carriages and corridors were cleaned out daily while we were stopping at stations. A little army of women swarmed into the train directly it stopped, provided with buckets of hot water, and they washed out the whole place quite efficaciously and with great rapidity. It is really much better to have oilcloth on the floors rather than carpet, for the sake of cleanliness. The dusting of the carriages was done every morning by the attendant after he had made the beds, and he kept them quite nice and tidy. The one thing that provoked me through all our travelling in Russia, however, was the fact that the attendants had keys which opened all the bolts, so that they could come in whenever they choose, and the art of knocking before entering was unknown to most of them. They generally seemed to select the most inappropriate moment for coming in, when one was either dressing or undressing; but fortunately all travelling tends to blunt one’s susceptibilities on such points.

The ninth day after leaving Kharbin we reached Kinel, the next station before reaching Samara, the real junction for the Turkestan line. There was only a small margin of time allowed for changing train there, so we decided it was better to have to wait unduly long at Kinel, rather than run the risk of missing our train and waiting twenty-four hours for the next one. We got out at a most dreary hour, which seems to be rather frequently the case on Russian railways, considering how few are the trains;[168] it was between one and two o’clock in the morning, and our baggage was deposited in the ladies’ waiting-room, where we found the only sofa filled with babies. A considerable number of passengers had their luggage in the adjoining restaurant, where they slept or smoked. The atmosphere was decidedly trying, so I spent most of the time pacing up and down the platform, watching the dawn grow, for even at that early hour there was a broad belt of orange light lying along the horizon. At fitful intervals one and another of the passengers would come out for a breath of fresh air, or order drinks from the somnolent attendants. It appeared to be the natural thing for people to be spending the night at the station, though no train disturbed the peace of the place for several hours. Not one of the officials seemed able to speak or understand any language but Russian, so I addressed a young German tourist to ask for information. He told me that there were no sleeping berths on the summer trains for Tashkent, the “wagon lits” service being suspended on the first of May, but that we should find the ordinary carriages thoroughly comfortable, the second class quite as good as the first (in which we proved him to be correct), for all the trains are arranged with a view to night travelling. He also told us that instead of the journey taking five days (as we had been informed when we made inquiries at Peking), it would only take three. Later on we discovered there was a wagon lits carriage at the rear of the train (without a single passenger in it),[169] but no restaurant car. Encouraged, I suppose, by the pleasure which he saw depicted on my face at such pleasant news, he went on to give us particulars of our route, by which he said he had just come from Turkestan. He advised us to go by the Black Sea instead of through the Caucasus, saying that the journey from Tashkent to Vienna by that route took not more than five days; the minimum time in reality is seven. He had a Russian time-table, quite a thick volume, which he advised us to purchase; we succeeded in buying one later in the day when the bookstall opened, and although the names were quite a puzzle in Russian characters, it provided us with constant occupation, both in deciphering them, and in fitting together the bits of the route, scattered on at least a dozen different pages. In the station at Kinel they had rather a good sort of map in a large frame on the wall opposite the ticket-office, arranged as under. As there are so few trains it is easier than[170] it would be on our lines, but such a map would be much more intelligible for cheap-trippers than our time-tables. These maps we saw in various places later on.

Four hours wore slowly away, and at last the ticket-office opened, and I presented a paper with “Tashkent—2 klacce,” and held up two fingers. Traveling is very cheap here; from Tashkent to Kinel, a distance of 1314 miles, the tickets are approximately first class, £4, 5s. 0d., second class, £2, 10s. 3d., third class, £1, 9s. 0d., fourth class, 14s., but then the train goes like a snail, and stops perpetually. The third and fourth class carriages always seemed to be packed with humanity, and the passengers lie all day, as well as all night long, on shelves one above the other. The fuel used both on this line and on the Trans-Siberian is entirely wood, so they have to be continually taking in a fresh stock, and each carriage has a little room for its own special heating apparatus. The funnels of the engines have large bulbs at the top to prevent the escape of sparks.

The first day we travelled through a vast cultivated plain, and the landscape was dotted over with a sprinkling of houses and many trees. The children brought forget-me-nots and anemones to sell at the wayside stations; but on this line the towns and hamlets are fewer than on the one we had just left. Though the land seemed so uninhabited the train always seemed full, and the passengers made themselves thoroughly at home. The second-class travellers, who were going any distance, put on fresh clothes, the ladies dressed in négligé costumes like tea-gowns. One amazingly stout lady put on a muslin gown over a pink slip, and looked just like an animated pin-cushion. These people seem to wear all their jewels too, when travelling. Often it was difficult to imagine where the few people visible at the stations had sprung from, especially to the south of Orenburg. This is one of the only two important places between Kinel and Tashkent, and is the principal town of the province of the same name. There are four mission stations in the Orenburg diocese, and twenty-seven Mohammedans were[172] baptized last year. To the south of Orenburg the land becomes more and more desolate-looking, and the vegetation is so sparse that one can hardly believe it is possible for anything to subsist upon it. Perhaps that is the reason why the Kirghiz nomadic tribes, who inhabit this territory, known as the Kirghiz Steppes, cultivate a peculiar kind of sheep called “stéatopyge” by the French traveller Capus. This sheep has a singularly fat tail, sometimes so long and heavy that it has to go on a little wheeled cart, and it is this tail which suffices to nourish the sheep in time of scarcity of herbage, in the same way that the camel is said to live on his hump; at the end of the winter the tail has dwindled to quite ordinary proportions. Unfortunately we did not see any of these interesting animals (though I once met one at Delhi), but during the following days we saw hardly any living things but camels, much used also by the Kirghiz. The earth seemed utterly barren, and exuded nothing but salt; hour by hour elapsed, only varied by the interest of stopping at some wayside station, standing alone in the desert, where samovars full of boiling water were eagerly sought by the passengers with their various pots and kettles; the ordinary charge for a potful is three farthings, and one wonders how the poor creatures who supply it are able to make any living out of so poor a harvest. Their only other wares are eggs (generally hard boiled), bottles of milk, and baskets of oranges and lemons. The latter are always in request for Russian tea, and[173] fetch a better price than most things. The peasants look most amiable, good-natured creatures, and are eminently picturesque in their embroidered blouses of blue, green, scarlet, or white, fastened in at the waist with a leathern belt. For the last half century the Russians have been gradually colonising the steppes. Some people labour under the impression that the agricultural classes are not only happier but also more successful when they are ignorant, but this has certainly not proved the case in the Russian Empire. The colonists have considerable advantages offered to them by the Government in the way of cheap grain and agricultural implements, but their ignorance of the rotation of crops and the necessity of feeding the land cause them to exhaust it in a few years’ time. The contrast between the Russian peasant and his German neighbour when you cross the frontier is extraordinary, and it is deplorable to consider the latent wealth of Siberia in conjunction with the present condition of its peasant population.

Both on the Turkestan and on the Trans-Siberian Railway we met agents of the British and Foreign Bible Society selling Gospels, Bibles, and Testaments in various languages, of which they had a good assortment in attractive bindings and extremely cheap. These agents are allowed free passes on all the lines in Russia. Ten of these passes are granted annually, and the colporteurs are able to carry on what may well be called a mission work among the immigrants and[174] others. The number of immigrants into Siberia in 1908 reached the astonishing figure of 760,000 persons. A Russian red cross nurse told me that she had travelled in charge of a train full of such immigrants, and the description of the horrors of the journey are only to be equalled by Zola’s tale of the pilgrims to Lourdes. To these immigrants many free copies of the Gospels are given, and the value of such a gift in that land must be very great. Books must be scarce in the greater part of the country, though, thanks to the generosity of a Russian there is a village libraries’ organisation in the province of Tomsk, by means of which fifty villages have been supplied with libraries. The generosity of the state railways department is not confined to the gifts of free passes for the colporteurs, but also the free carriage of all their books from the moment they enter Russian territory, and the remitting of all duty upon them. All the employés, too, of the Bible Society are exempt from the Trade and Industrial Tax.

The excellent example of the railway companies has been followed by many of the shipping companies on the Black Sea, the White Sea, and the Dnieper, Don, and Volga rivers. The companies, where there is a foreign element present, are much less willing to grant these facilities. Even the tramway companies in many towns give free tickets to colporteurs.

The second day we reached the little town of Aral at the head of the Aral Sea, after passing through the most desolate country: it could not have[175] been more accurately described than in the words of Browning:

Lake Aral, like the Caspian Sea, is salt: at present it covers more than 26,000 square miles, but it is always shrinking. There is a considerable fishing industry on it, and freshwater fish are found, but its shores are so barren that they are practically uninhabited. The Steppes which bound it on the north are inhabited by a nomad population of Kirghiz and Uzbegs living in felt tents (called kibitkas), whose main occupation is breeding cattle, horses, camels, and sheep. In the winter time they go to the more sheltered regions of Syr Daria, the province through which the line next passes.

We crossed the Syr Daria River, better known as the classic Jaxartes, and the only town of any size that lay on the route was Turkestan or Hazret. It still possesses one superb monument of the past, the mosque of Hazréti-Timur, built in 1404 by order of Tamerlane, which is said to be one of the finest[176] monuments of that epoch, and is visited by many pilgrims.

As we neared Tashkent we felt a certain amount of anxiety lest we should only have reached the goal to be ignominiously turned back by the police, despite our special permit; but apparently our appearance was disarming, and at Tashkent they did not even inquire for any thing beyond our passports. At Samarkand we handed them over as usual on arrival to the proprietor of the hotel, and the next day he said the police wished to know if we had the proper authorisation to visit Turkestan. We produced our note verbale, which evidently they were unable to read, as it was in French; they looked us up and down, from head to toe, asked if we had nothing more to show, and on being assured that we had not, and that the note verbale gave full permission for travel, they somewhat reluctantly took their departure. At Kazan (Bokhara) they got a Russian lady to look at our permit, who was able to assure them it was quite en règle, for they admitted they could not read it themselves. We heard that had we wished to go anywhere off the railway line we should not have been allowed to do so.

The district round Tashkent was a wonderful contrast to the dreary desert through which we had come, and prepared us in some measure for the wealth of foliage in which that town is embowered. Along the line were trees all decked in the vivid colouring of early spring; the air was filled with the fragrance[177] of their blossoms, and the sound of running water and rustling leaves whenever we halted, made a happy change from the monotonous harshness of railway noises. The afforestation work of the Russian authorities has already produced a marked difference in the rainfall, and they are keeping a much needed check on the cutting down of trees for firewood throughout the province.

Just ten days after leaving Kharbin we got out of the train at the handsome station of Tashkent, which seemed ablaze with light in comparison with the dimness to which we had been recently accustomed. We inquired for the porter of the Hotel de France to which we had been recommended by an acquaintance at Moscow, but there was none at the station. A friendly official said that other hotels were better, and their porters eagerly urged us to go with them. We thought it best, however, to stick to what we had been advised, especially as our letters had been directed to the Hotel de France; so we got into a droshky and drove away into the darkness. What a heavenly drive it seemed after the long days in the train. Our horses were all too nimble as we drove on and on through the warm and scented air, under apparently never ending avenues of tall poplars and bushy elms. A crescent moon shone amongst myriads of stars, and we wondered how long this mysterious drive would last, as after a time the driver appeared to have lost his bearings and turned to us for instructions. Naturally we were utterly unable[179] to direct him, but after half-an-hour, by the aid of local advice, we drew up beside the open doorway of a house surrounded by trees. There was not even “hotel” written up, and instead of a Frenchman coming at our summons, a person appeared who seemed unable even to recognise the name “Hotel de France,” though he gave a voluble but quite unintelligible answer in Russian. However, we crossed the murmuring rivulet which characterises most of the roads here, and entered the house. We found that it certainly was an hotel, though there was no one who spoke any language but Russian, and in the letter case there were no letters for us.

We were shown into a nice large bedroom, and then began the pantomime. We were extremely hungry, but disinclined to try the fancy dishes which we feared would be served to us if we failed to be explicit in our orders. We had not yet learnt the names of many things in Russian, and we totally disagreed with the one universal sentiment, expressed in the word “nitchevo = it doesn’t matter,” which met us at every turn, so I betook myself to my pencil and drew—or tried to draw—a chicken au plat. Not having sufficiently studied the works of art which adorn cookery books, I failed ignominiously to convey any meaning to mine host. I next attempted to draw the creature au naturel, and the attempt was crowned with success; but alas, mine host soon returned with graphic gestures to acquaint us that chicken was not to be had. I then drew chicken in[180] embryo, which was instantly recognised with an emphatic nod which heralded success.

The next matter to be dealt with was bed and bedding, but that was more easily accomplished, and we found the people thoroughly pleasant and obliging, anxious to get all we wanted and make us comfortable; they brought an extra bedstead, sheets, and pillows, all thoroughly clean. In fact our quarters were so comfortable that we rather regretted that we were only going to spend twenty-four hours there.

Next morning we were awakened by the familiar sound of growling camels and screeching peacocks in a neighbouring garden. We were soon abroad and found the pleasant impression gained by our drive of the night before fully justified, for every road is bordered with trees, and the poplars are the most beautiful and lofty I have ever seen; their silver stems stretch up erect as darts into the clear blue sky. There are shady public gardens where the ash tree and the acacia were in full blossom, filling the air with their fragrance; on the roofs of the smaller houses poppies and grass made a brave show of colour against the sky. All the houses were well shaded by trees except in the centre of the town, where fashionable shops displayed the latest novelties in hats and other things dear to the fashionable world of Tashkent. We made our way to the post-office, where most of the officials were women, and found quite a large budget of letters. Evidently there is no regular delivery, as they were all addressed to the hotel, and[181] some of them had been lying there at least a week. Later in the day we returned to inquire for a book, which from my letters I learnt had been forwarded there, and after some searching it was duly produced, but I afterwards found that difficulty had attended its despatch as well as its delivery; the London post-office at first declined to send it on the score of not knowing where Turkestan was.

Tashkent was conquered by the Russians in 1863, and it is only since then that the Russian town has grown up at a short distance from the old city; it boasts over 50,000 inhabitants, and has a considerable trade. At this time of year the climate is delicious, but in the summer it is said to be intensely hot, and in the rainy season the mud is so deep that the streets become almost impassable, and the men have to go about in what we should call wading boots. It is on this account that the natives have such peculiar carts, with spidery wheels about eight or ten feet in diameter. The driver sits on a saddle on the horse, with a foot resting on each shaft. Many of the tall, lean beasts, have handsomely embroidered horse cloths of blue and scarlet; they also wear broad scarlet or orange neck cloths, and beaded trappings hang from their manes and over their hind quarters; altogether they are most attractive.

We were delighted with the beautiful oriental colours of the clothing of the natives, as they rode about on handsome Arab steeds, looking the embodiment of pride amongst their prosaic conquerors.[182] Turbaned servants might be seen holding the horses outside houses while their masters were within, or the horses might be attached to rings in beams fastened in the roadway outside shops and offices for the purpose. Ladies, fashionably dressed, were driving about in troïkas, with three horses harnessed abreast. The centre horse has to trot, and the side ones canter with their heads turned away, so that they look all the time as if they were trying to pull away from the horse in the middle. It my opinion it has a most unnatural and unpleasant appearance to have one horse trotting while the others canter, and I cannot understand how they manage to drive so swiftly under such adverse circumstances. The Siberian horses are capable of doing twenty versts (about thirteen miles) an hour, says Capus. Travellers going any distance by carriage continue day and night without stopping longer than for meals and to change horses, but it must require an iron constitution to do this. Nearly every one at Tashkent seemed to ride or drive; in fact we learnt that it was considered quite infra dig to go on foot anywhere in Turkestan.

The town boasts two good new hotels; a fine public library, especially rich in works on Central Asia; an observatory; a museum; two large public schools; an experimental agricultural station and school; a seminary; a bank, and various public buildings. There is also a park containing a bicycle track, where they have races; at the entrance we saw a large monument commemorating the conquests of[183] the Russians in different parts of Turkestan. They first invaded it in 1863, and took this city and also Chemkend; in 1866 they took Khojend and Kokand, and completely destroyed the power of the latter, this proving the beginning of Turkestan as a Russian province. In the next two years they pushed their conquests further westward, and defeated the troops of the Emir of Bokhara and entered Samarkand. In 1873 Khiva was invaded and navigation rights obtained over the whole of the Oxus River, now known as the Amu Daria. Russia decided to leave Bokhara under the rule of the Emir, merely maintaining a protectorate, but the remainder of Turkestan has since that time been under Russian rule.

We called at the office of the Wagons Lits Company for information about our journey to Samarkand, and the manager obligingly got a young Russian, attached to the newspaper staff, to act as our guide for the afternoon. He spoke English with a strong American accent, and was extremely garrulous, having attained a thoroughly journalistic style of conversation. We took a carriage and drove to the old city, of which the walls, alas, have completely disappeared. It is buried in the midst of trees and gardens, for there is a fine system of irrigation there. All through both the Russian and also the native town we saw streams flowing; the watering is done by a simple process; a man goes down each side of the road simultaneously, armed with a long wooden scoop, with which he sweeps the water out of the little canals as far as the[184] centre, even on a wide road. This takes place at intervals during the day. Here and there in the native city is a good pond surrounded by trees. The houses are low and made of sun-dried bricks, looking more ruinous than the other cities we visited. Tashkent, it seems, is subject to earthquakes, which probably accounts for its dishevelled appearance, and it is difficult to believe that the population inhabiting it is both large and growing. According to the latest census the inhabitants number over 100,000, so evidently its decadent look is entirely misleading.

We first visited the old tombs of Sheikh Zenedjin-baba and Zenghiata, saints who flourished some centuries ago, and whose tombs are visited by thousands of pilgrims every year. The graveyard was picturesque; a dead tree was still standing among the tombs, which a stork had selected to crown with her nest. A little alley led us to the tomb, in which a devout worshipper was rocking himself to and fro, while he recited his prayers. I ventured to sketch him, as he was evidently oblivious (or pretended to be so) of observers.

It was somewhat difficult for our carriage to make its way through the narrow, tortuous lanes, but we were in no hurry to go fast for the people were so picturesque. They are mostly Sarts, “a name,” says Prince Krapotkin, “which has reference more to manner of life than to anthropological classification, although a much stronger admixture of Iranian blood[185] is evident in the Sarts, who also speak Persian at Khojend and Samarkand.” They are noted for their honesty and independence. There are also Persians and Uzbegs, the latter speaking a pure Jagatai dialect, and various other tribes are found among the bazaars of Tashkent. These bazaars are most fascinating, but as it was Friday there were but few merchants willing to do business, and the whole place had a deserted air. The bazaars are roofed in at the top, which makes them dark and stuffy, but they are sufficiently wide for carriages as well as foot-passengers to go through them. Our guide bargained for some silk scarves, which we thought rather attractive, but as the merchants refused to come down to what he thought a reasonable price, we did not buy more than a couple. The different trades occupy different parts of the bazaar, and one of the most important was the grain and another the tobacco market. Tashkent is also noted for its boots and harness.

In one way it was fortunate that our visit happened to be on a Friday, for we saw the people at prayer. We visited several of the mosques, but they have little artistic merit, and the oldest one has been so hideously redecorated with metal work and the crudest painting, that its 700 years of existence have been entirely obliterated, both within and without. The chief mosque was crowded with men herded within a rather small sort of verandah, where they stood while service was conducted in a loud discordant series of shrieks. A crowd of veiled women and[186] children pressed against the bars of the enclosure, but Mohammedanism has no place for women within her gates. Once for all Mohammed made the position of the women in the Moslem world unspeakably low and degraded: he said, “Woman was made from a crooked rib, and if you try to bend it straight it will break.” A woman, according to the universal Mohammedan belief, has no soul. Years ago I saw the Sultan going to the weekly worship one Friday at Constantinople, and it was part of the programme for his principal wife to see him go there from a certain spot; that she should ever have accompanied him was unthinkable. Another large party of women and children we saw gathered on a neighbouring roof like Peris outside Paradise. But we were not allowed to remain long; we were almost thrust out of the precincts of the mosque, for they have the greatest aversion, we were told, to Russians looking on at their worship. As our guide was Russian, I suppose they imagined us to be the same; elsewhere they treated us with great civility.

The children amused us much by their quaint costumes, and some of them were extremely pretty. The caps, ornaments, and embroideries they wear are charming, and a bizarre effect is produced by a bunch of feathers stuck upright in their caps and attached to their shoulders from the back like incipient wings.

The houses usually have verandahs outside them, where groups of men were reclining. They were highly picturesque, red being the predominating[187] colour of their clothes, heightened by the contrast of their white turbans. They were mostly smoking, gossiping, and drinking, and for all these pursuits they seem to have an untiring capacity.

There is only one Madressah (Mohammedan school) now left at Tashkent, which used to be a seat of learning, and it has few students, and is in a state of decay.

After dinner we regretfully set out for the station to pursue our way to the still more attractive city of Samarkand. The train was crowded, but as we arrived in good time we secured a coupé to ourselves, a most important matter with a journey of some fourteen hours before us. During the night we heard a crash of glass in the adjoining carriage; evidently it was merely accidental, for we heard nothing further; but it accounted for the rigid scrutiny to which the railway carriages are continually submitted in the course of every journey by the conductors, who keep the compartments always locked when unoccupied. One is never allowed to forget the hateful system of espionage, that has been brought to a rare perfection throughout the Russian Empire.

We awoke next morning to find ourselves in a grey desolate wilderness, as bare as the Hunger Desert. The lovely gardens full of fruit-trees characterising Tashkent extend for some distance round the city, and then comes a dull expanse of desert which, when seen through sheets of rain, is the acme of dreariness. When we reached the end of our railway journey we found, as usual, that the station was some miles away from our destination, Samarkand, and we drove through oceans of mud under a pelting rain to the Grand Hotel, a nice new house where the rooms looked out on to a little garden. To our relief our host and hostess had a limited acquaintance with the German language, so that we were able to make our wishes known, the main one being for thorough washing accommodation. We were taken to see a fine bath-room, and arranged to have the stove at once lighted, for it is something of a function to have a bath in Russia, and cannot be achieved under a couple of hours; our host was evidently very proud of possessing a bath-room, and we spent a happy afternoon getting rid of all traces of our eleven days and nights of travel.

[189]

Next morning a radiant sun following the rain showed us Samarkand in its most attractive guise. We drove through shady avenues, past fashionable shops towards the real city, and suddenly there burst upon our view a wonderful dome and lofty archway, jewelled with tiles of dazzling blue. It is the Gur Amir, the tomb of Tamerlane, the great Conqueror, the forerunner of the Mogul Emperors. In the midst of a thick cluster of trees the tomb rises erect, so that only the cupola is visible until you come close to it. It is enclosed by the care of the Russian authorities with an inconspicuous little wall, finished off with a metal coping along the top. Formerly the tomb was entered (according to regulation) from the south side, but most of the outer buildings have already fallen to pieces. The present entrance is on the north, and the façade is completely covered with tiles; it is a marvellous blaze of colour, composed of various shades of blue, varied with white and a little yellow, the whole effect being that of a blue mosaic. The decorations are varied; there are a large number of inscriptions, many of them from the Koran, in Persian characters of the fifteenth century. They certainly add rather than detract from the decorative character of the design. Passing through the entrance gate one comes into a grassy courtyard paved with black marble, in which are ancient mulberry trees, and the central building rises beyond them. The whole of this inner façade is also tiled. Among the inscriptions one was deciphered by Vambéry, which proved[190] to be the architect’s signature: “This is the work of poor Abdullah, son of Mohammed, native of Ispahan.”

In the days of his glory Tamerlane determined to have erected for himself a mausoleum excelling in magnificence all the other buildings at Samarkand. For this purpose he selected the Persian architect, Abdullah, charging him to build a tomb worthy to enshrine his remains. The two original towers which flanked the cupola are both gone, one of them quite recently, and the great western archway is falling to pieces, but the immense Kûfic[5] characters (white on a blue ground) which form the frieze immediately below the cupola are still almost perfect. The style is not entirely Persian, but was probably modified by the influence of the architecture which the Persians found in Samarkand. On each side of the main building is a small chapel containing tombs of minor importance. Entering the tomb by a beautifully carved and inlaid door, we found ourselves in a little sanctuary, where the faithful come to pray, laying their foreheads against the walls. The height of the dome (measured from within) is about 74 feet. Despite a small window at each end containing alabaster tracery, the light is dim, and a religious hush seems to pervade the building. Not only Tamerlane but others also are buried here. Shortly after the building of the mausoleum, his teacher,[191] Saïd Mir Berke, a venerable mullah (holy man), died, so Tamerlane showed his supreme reverence for him by having him buried in the Gur Amir, ordering that his own body should be placed (when he died) at the mullah’s feet. There are in addition several small tombstones surrounding the special slab (said to be of green jade) which marks Tamerlane’s resting-place. This precious monolith was sent for this purpose by a Mongolian princess ten years after his death to his successor, Nadir Shah, but was unfortunately broken in the transport. The two pieces have been fastened together, and it has been elaborately carved with Tamerlane’s name, titles, and ancestry, interspersed with passages from the Koran. Copies of these are for sale at the tomb. Monsieur Edouard Blanc, in an interesting article in the Revue des Deux Mondes (Feb. 15, 1893), says he examined this stone very carefully from the mineralogist’s point of view, and has no hesitation in declaring that it is not jade. Certainly there is no other known specimen of this stone anything like the size, for jade is only found in small pieces; but there are other stones frequently mistaken for jade, such as jadeite (hence its name), which is not nearly so valuable. Tamerlane’s known desire to have a tomb of jade is probably the reason why it is so called. The jade mines of Turkestan have been celebrated in China for at least 2000 years. Above the mullah’s tomb are two crossed bamboo poles bearing the Prophet’s green flag, and the standard, which consists of a horse’s mane and a gold button.[192] The tombs are enclosed by a low alabaster-work balustrade, as seen on the left hand in the sketch.

But Tamerlane was so afraid lest cupidity should cause his tomb to be rifled that he ordered his body to be buried in a crypt below the other tomb, the existence of which was until quite recently unknown, except to a few initiated persons. The entrance, which was concealed by a paving stone, is now open to the gaze of all. We went down into it by a flight of steep stone steps and found a number of tombs, one of which was the hero’s, made of specially finely carved marble. We were invited to pay a small sum in order to place candles on it, so I presume our respectful attitude had won us the reputation of being good Moslems. The vaulted roof of this crypt was admirably designed brickwork, of which the rough sketch opposite may give an idea. It was a twelve-sided figure, and the whole of the interior was in excellent repair. It was dimly lighted by a torch, which our guide produced, and we were glad to escape promptly back to the upper air, where I sat down to sketch. Various worshippers came in and out to say their prayers, for the worship of saints is a marked characteristic of Mohammedanism, and there are many shrines in Samarkand. Every one seemed friendly and devout, except an obvious tourist with his guide, who certainly disturbed the serenity of the atmosphere.

Another day I sketched the outside of that wonderful mausoleum, and day by day as we studied the monuments which time has defaced, but which even[193] in decay surpass all others in their potent effect upon the imagination, I dreamed of the genius which had left such an imperishable memory. Surely none of the other conquerors of the world was ever so strange a mixture as the great Mogul, compounded of ambition, lust of power, love of beauty, relentless cruelty, domestic affection, and zeal for “the Faith.”

Timur i Leng, the lame Timur, or Tamerlane (to use the vulgarised form of his name), was born at Shahr-i-Sabz, “the green city,” about fifty miles south of Samarkand, in 1336. His father, Teragai, had been[194] the first ruler in the country converted to Islamism, and he brought up his son Tamerlane in the studious retirement which he himself loved. The young man was well versed in the knowledge of the Koran, but he was noted also for his good horsemanship and other manly pursuits. Tamerlane soon abandoned his father’s way of life and reverted to the earlier type of Genghiz Khan and Kubla Khan. The accounts of the Mongol raids sound like visions of the lowest hell, beside which Dante’s descriptions are colourless; these raids are inconceivable to the modern mind, and yet history shows that they were not the work of madmen, but that they are due to a strain of ferocious brutality in the Mongol blood. Where this happens to be combined with great power or genius, as in the case of Ivan the Terrible, or Tamerlane, the result is appalling.

At the age of twenty-two Tamerlane was sent at the head of a thousand horse to invade Khorasan, but it was not the first time he had been in the field, and he was subsequently employed in fighting for his own throne after his father’s death. In 1369 he had conquered his opponents, and he mounted the throne at Samarkand. It would be monotonous and vain to recapitulate the history of the incessant wars which Tamerlane waged during the next thirty years in order to extend his dominions in Central Asia, but it was when he was over sixty years of age that he undertook the greatest of his expeditions, the conquest of India (as it has been erroneously called).[195] He ravaged the north and sacked its principal city, Delhi, returning to Samarkand with great spoil. Clavigo, the historian, says that he brought back ninety captured elephants to carry stone for the building of a new mosque at Samarkand. It was Baber, his descendant of the fifth generation, who founded the Mongol Empire in India in 1525, more than a century and a quarter later than Tamerlane.

During this campaign Tamerlane became embarrassed by the number of his Hindu prisoners, no less than 100,000 at a single time, so his counsellors urged him to have them slain. The historian remarks: “He listened to this considerate and wise advice, and gave orders to that effect”; so that they were all slain “with the sword of holy war.” In order to accomplish the frightful task the soldiery was not sufficient, and “one of the chief ecclesiastics, who in all his life had never even slaughtered a sheep, put fifteen Hindus to the sword.” (Holden’s “Mogul Emperors of Hindustan,” p. 27.) On another occasion he slew no less than 70,000, and had the heads piled into a pyramid and plastered over with mud. In this gruesome conception he was following the example of his ancestor Genghiz Khan, who had devised the idea of having the thousands of corpses which were slain on various occasions built into architectural designs. At the taking of Bagdad the number of slaughtered enemies was 80,000.

Tamerlane was in the habit of taking his wives with him on his campaigns, as well as learned men,[196] and it is related that when in India he had the latter placed behind the women, and the women behind the army during the battles. The fear of him was so great that even after he had left Delhi prayers were said in his name in the mosque there until his death; afterwards in the name of his son. Tamerlane’s religiosity (for it can really be called by no other name) is shown in the account which he caused to be written in his Memoirs giving his reasons for the invasion of India. “My principal object in coming to Hindustan and in undergoing all this toil and hardship was to accomplish two things. The first was to war with infidels, the enemies of the Mohammedan religion; and by this religious warfare to acquire some claim to reward in the life to come. The other was a worldly object, that the army of Islam might gain something by plundering the wealth of the infidels; plunder in war is as lawful as their mother’s milk to Mussulmans who fight for their faith, and the consuming of that which is lawful is a means of grace.” The necessity for keeping his troops in good humour can be readily understood, but that the awful atrocities and unmentionable crimes committed by them, which are veiled in that last sentence, should be characterised as “a means of grace,” sounds like an unholy jest. It is impossible to ascertain with any accuracy the numbers of Tamerlane’s troops, but not only were there picked troops of some 200,000 men, but also vast numbers of irregulars, who flocked to his standard in the hope[197] of plunder. But besides Tamerlane’s hosts of soldiers, who are said by his biographer to have idolised him, he had also hosts of artificers and workmen, for he built many palaces, mosques, and houses, of which only a comparatively small number survive the ravages of time. Clavijo describes the building of a street full of shops, which was to extend from one end of Samarkand to the other. No heed was taken of the claims of those who already were in possession; their houses were torn down, while the inmates fled with such things as they were able to snatch up and take with them. As fast as the houses were demolished others rose upon the ruins, as by enchantment, and at the end of twenty days and nights of uninterrupted labour the street was complete, and Tamerlane had it occupied forthwith by shopkeepers.

The various trades were formed into guilds as in western lands apparently, and at one of the feasts given during the visit of the Spanish embassy we are told that “an amphitheatre was covered with carpets, where there were masquerades. The women were dressed like goats, others like sheep and fairies, and they ran after each other. The skinners and butchers appeared like lions and foxes, and all other tradesmen contributed specimens of their skill.”

The Conte de Rubruquis, who was sent by St. Louis of France from the Holy Land to visit the Court of Tamerlane, gives a similar impression of the way in which building operations were carried on by that autocratic monarch, all of whose operations seem to[198] have been executed in desperate haste. He says of the building of one of the great mosques: “The architects chose a happy moment to begin it, namely, on the fourth of Ramadam, 801 (May 28, 1399), which answers to the year of the Hare, the Moon being then in Leo, going out of the sextile aspect of Venus. The masons, brought from foreign countries, as mentioned before, gave the greatest proofs of their art and skill, as well in the solidity and beauty of the angles, as in the strength of the foundations of this noble edifice. In the inside of the mosque were employed two hundred masons from Azerbijana, Persia, and India; five hundred men likewise worked in the mountains in the cutting and hewing of stones, which were sent into the city. Several other artisans of different trades performed their parts with the utmost application. Ninety-five chains of elephants were made use of in drawing large stones with wheels and machines according to the laws of mechanics. The princes of the blood and Emirs were appointed to oversee the workmen, that not one moment might be lost in finishing this stupendous building.” The event was celebrated with sumptuous banquets, accompanied by all sorts of plays and diversions. “The Empress Rokia Canica on this occasion gave a noble entertainment, accompanied with concerts of music and fine dancing.”[6] The descriptions of Clavijo, the Spanish envoy, are equally vivid and interesting, giving[199] a thoroughly complete picture of life at the Court of the great Khan. Referring to the Empress Cano (as Clavijo calls her), he says that after she had approached the Emperor, attended by her 300 ladies and eunuchs, and had taken her seat, the second wife or “little Cano” came out and took up her position, followed in turns by his seven other wives. The tents and pavilions on such occasions were of the utmost magnificence, scarlet cloth embroidered with gold and silks, white satin and different coloured silks, with silken cords and tassels. The tables were of gold, and the ornaments of gold and precious stones. Drinking formed an important part of the ceremony, and the Empress was greatly displeased when the monk de Rubruquis refused to drink at her invitation; he narrates that many of the guests became quite drunk and even fell down before her, which added to the amusement. There was also a popular and less harmful beverage of cream and sugar. The meats consisted of sheep and oxen, roasted whole, and served on dishes of thick stamped leather. No less than three hundred men were requisite to bring them in, and camels were used to bring them to the place. This part of the feast sounds quite unrefined, for the food is said to have been placed in heaps on the ground, and there is no mention of any utensils.

At another great festival to which the Spanish envoys were summoned, they were forced to pay elaborate homage to one of the Khan’s grandsons newly come from India, kneeling time after time[200] before him. Doubtless they felt there was no choice as to obeying any such order of Tamerlane, for had they not seen plenty of instances of his summary methods of so-called “justice.” At the marriage festival of two of his grandsons Tamerlane said he “knew how to be merciful and kind to some, and how to be severe to others,” so a number of gallows were set up at the place of entertainment. When the games were over he meted out “justice” to various people who had incurred his displeasure, and they were instantly put to death; hanging was the more aristocratic punishment, and execution was the fate of the poorer classes.

Tamerlane’s most pleasing characteristic is the deep affection he entertained for his Chinese wife and for his sons, whose death caused him deep and passionate grief. There is a legend that he caused his daughters to be taught magic in order to help him in his conquests, but that sounds wholly at variance with his character. He was extremely energetic and ambitious, and brooked no interference. The portraits of his personal appearance are far from pleasing; he was not only lame, but also blind in one eye. Tamerlane’s last campaign was against the Turks, and he pushed as far as to Damascus, taking prisoner the Sultan Bajazet. On his return he projected another distant campaign against China, but he fell ill of ague and fever, and died in Syr Daria in 1405. His body was embalmed and carried for burial to Samarkand.

Tamerlane’s tomb is on the threshold of Samarkand, and is but the prelude which introduces the travellers to wonder upon wonder. The whole of the first day we devoted to it, so as to come with a prepared mind and yet quite fresh to the wealth of beauty that lies within the city. A fine avenue of poplars leads from the tomb to the imposing citadel, dipping into a deep ravine (where a wood market is always going on); as one mounts the hill the citadel seems to tower above the city. Its one relic of interest is the Keuk-Tash, a grey stone, ten feet long and four feet broad, said to have been originally brought from Broussa. This formed the seat from which Tamerlane dispensed judgment—one cannot say “justice”—and which in later days was used by the Amirs of Bokhara for the same purpose. A number of bazaars line the road, giving the impression of a busy, flourishing town, and the road is thronged with carriages, men on horseback, and carts. What a fascinating crowd it was. I must briefly describe its chief elements. The population is principally Sart, but there are Persians,[202] Afghans, Kirghiz, and others. Some of their horses are splendid proudly-stepping creatures, and it is a marvel to see their trappings, handsomely embroidered cloths on which the equally handsomely decorated antique saddles rest. These are either painted or inlaid wood, and have a high peak in front; the stirrups are equally decorative, but fastened so short that the knees are always bent. The Sarts invariably ride unless extremely poor, and it is astonishing to see how fine some of them are, who yet have to carry home their purchases from the market, a somewhat incongruous effect being produced by these gorgeous creatures having an armful of vegetables. If too poor to ride a horse, the Sart may at least be able to afford a donkey. Some of them have a closely veiled woman riding pillion; others will have their young sons riding before and behind them on the same horse. The Sarts wear long flowing cotton or silk robes of brilliant colours, especially affecting stripes, and high leather boots. On their heads they wear little gaily-embroidered caps, surrounded by a turban of dazzling whiteness, with ends coquettishly hanging down by the left ear on to the shoulder. A poor man may be only able to afford two or three yards of coarse white cotton for the purpose, but the rich man will have twenty or thirty yards of the finest muslin. Round the waist the men wear ornate belts, into which are stuck the knife with gold or silver jewelled handle in its sheath of leather, and in another case a comb, toothpick, and other et ceteras.[203] Among the foot-passengers are a certain number of women dressed in long, grey-blue cloaks from head to foot, only just showing the wide trousers fastened in at the ankle; there is but the smallest peep-hole through a horsehair veil like a meat sieve. They are mere chattels, and are kept strictly secluded. The children in their gay clothes form a delicious contrast, and are as bright and merry as birds, full of mischief and fun; we had a good opportunity of watching them while sketching, and they were delightful neighbours for the most part, despite being rather distracting.

The first building that arrests the attention at the entrance to the town is the citadel, but it has been transformed into Russian barracks, so that the exterior is the main thing of interest. It boasts in modern times of having been the scene of a stirring episode when the Russians first took possession in 1868. A small garrison having been left there while the main army went in pursuit of the Amir of Bokhara, found itself surrounded by 20,000 men, and for five days succeeded in holding the position until relieved by the timely arrival of a corps from Tashkent. Then a terrible vengeance fell upon the doomed city, which was given over for three days to pillage as in the days of Tamerlane. What grim irony to call Samarkand la bien gardée, when through all the centuries it has been desolated, beginning from the conquest of Alexander the Great, more than twenty-two centuries ago, down to the present time. Under the Arab[204] Sámánids in the eighth century it became a great centre of learning, and was renowned throughout the world; then Genghiz Khan fell upon it in 1219, and although it is said to have been defended by 110,000 men, he took the city and let loose his ferocious hordes upon it. When they left the city the population had been reduced to one-fourth of the size it had been, but even then it was said to boast 25,000 families. In the days of Tamerlane it rose again to 150,000, and at the present day the native city covers a great area, being enclosed within a low wall of nine miles in extent.

The next group of ancient buildings which meets the eye is the great market square, the Righistan, three sides of which are surrounded by madressahs or colleges, the fourth side being bounded by a row of small native shops. The four sides are quite separate from one another, a street passing along the north side of the square in front of the Tilla-Kari Madressah. It would be impossible to describe the magnificent effect of these buildings due to their great height, simplicity of design, brilliancy of colour, and the noble space which they enclose. The square is more than two centuries later in date than the days of Tamerlane, but it is the harmonious continuation and completion of his work. The eastern building is the oldest of the madressahs, called after its builder, Uleg Beg (A.D. 1420 approximately); he was the grandson of Timur, a great patron of art and science. He made a table of the fixed stars, agreeing pretty[205] closely with that made by the celebrated Danish astronomer, Tycho-Brahé, more than a century later. It is the smallest of the three madressahs, containing accommodation for only fifty students, but attached to it was the world-renowned observatory and school of mathematics. Uleg Beg used the quadrant, the radius of which, says d’Herbelot, equalled the height of St. Sophia. A description of one madressah will suffice for the three, as they are all built on the same plan. The front of the quadrilateral building is about 100 to 150 feet in height, with an immense porch nearly extending to the top of it; the porch is mostly filled in with beautiful tiles, but contains a small window in the upper part and a wide door below, with smaller ones on either side. The broad spaces of masonry flanking the porch are subdivided into three sections, which are all differently and richly decorated with tiles, in which blue is the predominating colour. The two small doorways lead into a paved court surrounded by buildings, in the centre of each of which is a pointed porch called “pichtack,” similar to that of the façade, but on a much smaller scale, and generally of finer workmanship. This is surrounded by arcades, the central one being a hall for prayer, decorated with suitable inscriptions cut in hard stone or marble slabs in the walls. The courtyard corresponds to our cloister of the West, and trees cast a pleasant shade in it where the studious Mohammedans spend so many weary hours, for the university training lasts from twenty[206] to twenty-seven years. One of the students showed us his tiny cell with its store of books—a very limited one. As we entered another student or Mullah stood praying just within the porch at the top of his voice, and in shrill and dolorous accents: the Sunnites adopt this tone in order that there may be no suspicion of tune or melody. The studies are by no means confined to religion, however, for they embrace all the faculties, and men are here trained to fill every office of Church and State. The Koran and its commentaries are considered fundamentals, and when one reflects that Mohammedanism owes its widespread success no less to the proselytising spirit of its merchants and soldiers than of its religious teachers, one is forced to admire the wisdom which requires that such thorough teaching be given to the educated classes. We were told that the students have to observe strictly certain rules throughout the whole course of their university career; married men are allowed to spend two nights a week in their own homes, but the remaining five must be spent in the madressah. The length of the course is a heavy strain on the resources of a family, but many of these people, living in mean surroundings and with no outward pomp, are possessors of considerable wealth. In Tashkent the Government is offering free education for boys in the Russian schools, in order to attract the Sarts to send their sons to them, and the lessons are given both in Russian and in Sart, half and half. This is done for political purposes, and with a view[207] to getting more into touch with the native population: at present there is a great gulf fixed between them.

To return to our subject—the architecture of the schools. On the right and left of the central façade there are side wings, originally covered with tiles, but now somewhat injured by time, and at their outer end rise lofty cylindrical towers of great height and entirely covered with tiles; they are now quite out of the perpendicular, and it is impossible to do anything to preserve them from the effects of the violent earthquakes which are continually destroying the priceless monuments of Samarkand.

The madressah of Shir Dar (“the lion bearing”), built in 1601, faces that of Uleg Beg, and the only difference of importance between the two is that the former has two domes rising from the side wings of the façade, namely, between the porch and the towers. It is the largest of the three madressahs, and contains rooms for one hundred and twenty students. Its name is due to the heraldic figures of lions (only they are more like tigers) on the façade. Most of the designs on all the architecture at Samarkand are arabesques, inscriptions, or geometrical figures, but there are occasionally animals introduced, such as lions, griffons, and dragons. As regards colour, in the later architecture, black, green, and gold are added to the blues and yellow characterising the earlier tiles, but there is comparatively so little other colouring than blue, that it passes unnoticed without close inspection.

[208]

From the summit of the northernmost tower criminals used to be hurled, we were informed, in the “good old days,” into the square below called “the Gluttonous Place”; this was the case at Bokhara only last century: they were trussed up like fowls. Visitors are usually taken by the professional guide up this madressah to look over the city, from the platform upon which the cupolas rest. It is perhaps desirable to warn ladies visiting Samarkand to beware of this guide, as he bears an unsatisfactory character. Our unofficial guide took us to the top of the Tilla Kari (“dressed in gold”) façade, which is much loftier, and from which a fine view of the mountains is to be obtained. The ascent was steep, rough, and perilous, but well worth not only the effort, but also the resultant stiffness of many days. The vision that burst upon our view as we emerged from the dark staircase was that of a city gleaming among a wealth of trees, stretching far across the plain to the distant, snow-capped mountains. Far below the motley crowd looked like ants; the vivid colouring of their robes was almost indistinguishable, and only a hushed murmur rose to our ears from the busy throng.

In the Tilla-Kari Madressah (built in 1618) there is room for fifty-six students. It has an important mosque, of which the inside walls were not only decorated with blue tiles, but also with fine marble slabs handsomely cut and bearing gilded inscriptions, but the gilding was somewhat dimmed by time.[209] Evidently there was a large and costly carpet on the floor, for our feet sank noiselessly into the soft pile, but it was covered with a drugget, and we were only allowed to see a small corner. This madressah has no flanking towers, and a less ornate façade, which probably gave rise to the idea that it was the oldest, whereas it is the most recent of the three.

Our evident delight in the beauty of the place was obviously a source of no little gratification to the people; our only regret was that we were unable to talk to them. Few people know the Sart language, or even know of its existence, but in the mosques and bazaars Persian as well as Arabic is current. The people to whom the glories of the place are like a twice-told tale, watched our expression with some wonder, but keen appreciation; when they had further inquired as to our nationality, it seemed as if we were admitted into a sort of friendly intimacy.

We started one day from our hotel with a pleasant old man as droshky driver; to him our host gave elaborate instructions as to where we should go and what we should see; but in the old city he picked up a picturesque native in white turban and wine-coloured robe, who forthwith constituted himself our guide. Our inability to talk or even to understand his language was a slight bar to our enjoyment, yet in the course of the morning we gathered a certain amount of information about the city, and felt that we had missed seeing nothing of real importance.

One of the finest ruins is the madressah of Bibi[210] Khanum, the daughter of the Chinese Emperor, and favourite wife of Tamerlane. She is said to have built this not only as a school, but also as a mausoleum for her remains; its greatness and beauty, however, were such that she offered it instead to her lord and master (no doubt a wise policy on her part), and built instead for her tomb what is known as the little Bibi Khanum, an unimposing structure overlooking the grain market.

The Spanish historian, Clavijo, gives a vivid picture of the lady taking part at a great feast in honour of the wedding of Tamerlane’s grandsons. He says: “When the people were all arranged in order round the wall which encircled the pavilion, Cano, the chief wife of this lord, came forth to be present at the feast. She had on a robe of red silk, trimmed with gold lace, long and flowing. It had no waist, and fifteen ladies held up the skirt of it to enable her to walk. She wore a crested head-dress of red cloth, very high, covered with large pearls, rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones, and embroidered with gold lace. On the top of all there was a little castle, on which were three large and brilliant rubies, surmounted by a tall plume of feathers.... Her hair, which was very black, hung down over her shoulders, and they value black hair much more than any other colour. She was accompanied by 300 ladies, of whom three held her head-dress when she sat down, lest it should tilt over. She had so much white lead on her face that it looked like paper, and this is put on to protect[211] it from the sun, for when they travel (evidently Clavijo suffered in the same way as modern travellers when seeking information) in winter or in summer all great ladies put this on.” The palace one may very well believe, from what we can see of its remains, was a fitting background to such a gorgeous company. Its vast height and the brilliancy of the tiles make it one of the most impressive sights in Samarkand. The magnificent cupola is sadly broken, but the remains show that it is different from other cupolas in Samarkand, which were fluted and ovoid in shape, with blue tiles decorating them in fine contrast to the pearly whiteness of the remainder of the structure. The Bibi Khanum cupola is dome-shaped and entirely covered with the turquoise blue tiles so characteristic of Chinese architecture (in Shansi especially), and one likes to fancy it as a reminiscence of the princess’s native land. It is the most glorious note of colour, and at a distance, where the other tiles lose all their effect, it glows with undimmed beauty. It added value and charm to the various shades of blue in the great archway below it. In my sketch of the city I have tried to give this effect. The walls of the palace are sadly ruined, and it is to be feared that soon little will remain; the majestic archways can still be traced, and some fluted twisted columns of vivid blue are almost perfect, terminating below in an elegant design some feet above the ground. Hard by, but outside the precincts of the palace, another lofty tower stands erect, entirely covered with blue arabesques. Surely[212] such a wealth of beauty can be found nowhere else in the world.

In the centre of the main courtyard, under the shade of the trees, is a great marble lectern, richly carved, on which the gigantic Koran of Othman was placed, which, it was alleged, the Chinese princess used to read from a neighbouring window. It is certainly difficult to see how it could be read otherwise than from some elevation, except by a giant. The natives believe in its miraculous efficacy in cases of spinal diseases, if the patient can bend sufficiently to creep underneath it.

There is still one octagonal tower covered with tiles which is fairly complete, and also a portion of one of the immense round towers similar to those in the Rigistan. In the interesting volume of Messrs. Durrieux and Fauvelle, called Samarkande la bien gardée, there is a true and suggestive comparison of these buildings, the Rigistan still comparatively complete and perfect, but degraded from its former greatness by its present inhabitants, the Bibi Khanum an absolute ruin, but glorious with the imperishable beauty of the past. The Chinese lady founded the largest of any of the schools of Samarkand.

As I was trying somewhat hurriedly to sketch a few architectural details, the whole being far too vast to attempt, except from a considerable distance, a lamentable whining arose almost at my feet, and a litter of puppies crawled out from some brushwood. Our guide began looking about, and soon discovered[213] an empty old tin, which he got a lad to fill with water. He next hailed a man in the bazaar and bought bread; when he had crumbled it up the puppies fell upon it like starvelings. The buying of the bread brought to light the fact that a different coinage is current here from that used in the Russian city, and explained why our tips were looked on with evident suspicion.

From the palace we went to the grain market close by, and found a scene, the picturesqueness of which beggars description. Indeed an apology is due to the reader for the number of adjectives and superlatives used in this chapter (I believe these are quite antiquated grammatical terms, but I am ignorant of the new names which are later than my day); the fact is that this is the most wonderful city I have yet come across in my wanderings, and no words seem adequate, so I trust to be forgiven. Here one could escape from European anachronisms, and the place was filled with a gay, bustling throng of men and beasts. The water-carrier was busy quenching man’s thirst from an unappetising-looking skin slung over his shoulder, which still retained the shape of the animal to whom it originally belonged. Another man provides the smoker with a whiff of tobacco from a general pipe. We pushed our way gently through the throng, treated with utmost courtesy by young and old. We climbed up to Bibi Khanum’s tomb, an excellent point of vantage from which to look down on the busy scene. Immediately below[214] us was the grain market, to the right a busy traffic in green grass used for fodder; beyond that was a space specially devoted to camels, where the beasts knelt in long rows, tranquilly surveying the scene. Further away was a large enclosure full of horses, and another space devoted to the sale of fuel. All round the market were low buildings, or booths, for all sorts of things, and a row of busy blacksmiths and harness makers. Blocks of rock-salt from Hissar, sweetmeats, tobacco, and green snuff found plenty of purchasers, while itinerant vendors plied a busy trade in all directions. Every day that we were there seemed equally busy, and in the bazaars they sell not only native goods, but large quantities of Russian silks, especially those made in Moscow. Cotton goods from Manchester were not lacking, and it is to be feared that competition is killing to a large extent the native industries. They no longer make the wonderful carpets of ancient times, and we were warned that it is risky to buy old ones on account of infection. Some of the silks are attractive, but majenta is a favourite colour, and the curious designs would not look well transplanted from their local setting.

Leaving the market we passed through a little valley on the eastern side, and to our surprise a picturesque native suddenly stepped into the carriage and sat down opposite to us. Our self-constituted guide was seated on the box, so he turned round to explain that it was quite right, for we should require the man’s services directly. In point of fact we stopped[215] in less than two minutes in front of a gateway, the entrance to which was blocked by a pole placed across it. We passed through a side gate on foot into a shady park, where numbers of people were seated in parties under the trees, and sweetmeat sellers were plying a brisk trade. There are many different trees at Samarkand, but the chief of them are the white poplars and the black Turkestan elms; the latter are the national sacred tree—the karagatch. The people are great gardeners, and the water-supply is excellent; indeed it is being drawn increasingly from the river which supplies Bokhara, to the detriment of that city.

As we strolled along the shady paths veiled women eyed us furtively. A few minutes’ walk brought us to a short flight of steps leading down to a fine blue-tiled gateway. As we entered it a vista of great beauty, a masterpiece of art, was revealed, which had previously been completely hidden from view. Forty gleaming marble steps lead upward to a fine gateway, surmounted by domes. A flowering shrub hung over the wall on the right, and a cluster of scarlet poppies had forced their way between the slabs of marble. In the porch sat a typical group of natives, and our guide presented us with some ceremony to the Mullah, who was apparently in charge of the buildings—the Hazréti Shah Zindeh, or summer palace of Tamerlane. The palace is called after a saint, Shah Zindeh, whose tomb is one of the buildings; in fact it would never occur to any one that this was a palace, but rather a collection of shrines and tombs.[216] The saint is expected to rise again some day. On reaching the top of the steps we came into a little flagged lane, with the most brilliant archway standing up against the sky (the one in the sketch), such a blaze of scintillating colour that the blue heaven looked dull and opaque in comparison. Here the tiles are finer than any of the others; they are modelled in relief and in open work, unlike any that we saw elsewhere. The designs were of an infinite variety, and it seemed a grievous pity that the little hall within was dirty and befouled by birds nesting there; all the walls within, as well as without, were covered with various kinds of tiles. Opposite this was another hall, quite different in its decoration. A little further down the winding lane were another pair of halls, also surmounted by domes, and with yet other designs on the walls; there are altogether seven of them, the remaining three being grouped together at the extreme end of the lane, and forming the termination of it. The innermost shrine is a little mosque, consisting of two rooms, a sort of holy of holies. On the wall I noticed a rough colour print of the Kaaba, and named it to our guide. He was greatly interested, and asked if I had ever been to Mecca, and I fancy reckoned me at once one of the faithful.

We were shown the great Koran, a gigantic volume to suit the size of the lectern in Bibi Khanum’s madressah. The famous original was carried to St. Petersburg after the taking of Samarkand by the Russians, but this is said to be a fine sixteenth-century[217] copy of it. There were relics of the saint pointed out to us behind a screen, but we could not make out what they were, and we were shown the beautiful carpet, a fine specimen of those made in Turkestan. Banners of red, blue, and green hang over these treasures, and under them the guardian of the shrine sat down, intimating that he was now prepared to receive a gift. To judge by his attitude he thought it would be a lordly one, but there is always a strange discrepancy in the East between the magnitude of the gift and the air with which it is received. In various nooks and corners people lay curled up asleep, or were drowsily repeating their prayers. While I sketched our two guides were evidently discussing our merits, and at last one inquired if we were Russians, and on hearing that we were not they wanted to know whether we liked the Russians, making it abundantly plain that they did not. Nevertheless they acquiesce without much apparent feeling to the yoke of the foreigner, no doubt accepting it as “Fate.”

One of the interesting points to visit outside Samarkand is the tomb of the prophet Daniel, whom the people insist on considering to be the hero of Scripture history. We drove to it through the town, passing out of the market up a steep dusty road. A mosque dominates the city from the brow of the hill, and around it is a large cemetery of dreary, neglected graves. It was from this point that I sketched the city, and while doing so was somewhat startled by finding a large tortoise at my side, which had crawled[218] out of the grass. The road is primitive, but no one expects anything else, and constant carriage exercise no doubt is good for the inhabitants in lieu of any other kind. The way leads through sandy, hillocky ground (suggestive of dunes by the seashore) for about a couple of miles, and then the road abruptly ends. We got out of the carriage and the driver led us on foot down a ravine to the tomb. It is the longest tomb one would suppose that could be found anywhere, being about 25 yards in length (Edouard Blanc says), and is finely situated on a rock terrace, with crags rising above it and plenty of trees below it down to the edge of a river. The legend which accounts for the extraordinary length of the tomb is that, owing to some miraculous quality, it grows a few inches every year, and that by the time it has stretched round the earth Islamism will dominate the whole world.[7] However, the Russian governor decided the miracle should cease, and ordered a building to be placed over it, an inconspicuous erection with five little cupolas along the top and surmounted by the usual standard, tuft of hair and rams’ horns; this last is the usual offering made by Sarts at a saint’s shrine, and which we saw again on the tombs outside Bokhara.

Strolling down the steep hill-side into a grove of trees below, we came to a busy scene. The trees rise out of a large terrace, where handsome carpets were spread on the ground, on which were seated parties[219] of devotees engaged in conversation or in prayer, while their horses were tethered hard by in the shade. Close at hand servants were busily preparing food at various fires under a shed, and it looked as if it were some picnic instead of a religious exercise. Evidently the worshippers were going to make a day of it, and they looked highly picturesque with their many-coloured robes and white turbans.

The valley was a charming one, full of lofty poplars and elms. A mill was built over the river lower down, and there were many houses nestling among the trees. The yellow soil, called toprach, is extremely fertile when sufficiently watered, and the Sarts have a saying, “Plant a stick in the toprach, give it a trickle of water, and next year you will have a tree.”

There are other excursions worth making in the neighbourhood, and we greatly regretted that lack of time prevented our doing them. One in particular we thought would have been attractive, namely, a ride to the snow-covered mountains, whence there is a fine view over the plain to the city. There are ruins called Aphrosiab all round the city, and interesting coins of the Græco-Bactrian period have been found there. Till within the last few years the madressah of Timur Malik, ten kilometres distant, was still standing, but it has been laid in ruins by an earthquake. There are other mosques in the city worth visiting, especially that of Zemreh Khodja, the mausoleum of Khodja ben Khaddra, and the madressahs of Ishrak Khaneh and Khodja Akhrar.

The journey from Samarkand to Bokhara only takes about six and a half hours by rail, across a dull monotonous plain as far as Kazan (pronounced Kaghan), thence on a little branch line through green fields for the last half-hour. We stopped at the Russian settlement of Kazan, an absolutely uninteresting place. We were informed that the Hotel d’Europe was comfortable, and we drove to it from the station, only to find every room engaged. The German proprietress told us they were always busy, but recommended us to the only other hotel, the Commercial. Here we found a thoroughly clean room, and the pleasantest of Russian hostesses. As usual, we were expected to have brought our bed clothes, but not having done so the hostess fetched some out of her private store, and she was quite gratified by our admiration of her handiwork on the sheets: “Made when I was unmarried,” she said, with a weary smile.

Next morning we intended taking an early train on the little branch line to Bokhara, but the heat was oppressive, so we delayed till the afternoon when[221] the air was somewhat cooled by thunder rain. Bokhara is said to be intolerably hot, quite different from Kazan, though only eight miles distant. The fields of grain looked green and fresh, and already the crops were beginning to be cut, the deep blue of the cornflowers glinting among them. The train runs between Kazan and Bokhara half-a-dozen times per day.

On our arrival there we saw the truth of what we had been told, that Bokhara was not a place where Europeans could stay, for there are only small caravanserais and no hotel, but there are some Russian buildings outside the city walls, including a fine bank. The old walls enclose a large city, but as we made our way through its narrow streets we were struck with the absence of population, such a striking contrast from Samarkand. At the gate were Sart guards and a row of fixed bayonets hung on the wall of the guard house. Here we were no longer in Russian territory, for the province of Bokhara, 100,000 square miles in extent, cuts like a wedge through Turkestan, and is a vassal state of the Russian Empire. It only boasts two cities of importance, Bokhara and Khiva, and is ruled by the Amir. The Government is a hereditary despotism, with absolute power of life and death. Russia, however, keeps a jealous eye upon its affairs, and when two native missionaries (under the auspices of the Swedish Mission) had been working there some time ago, the Russian authorities insisted upon their being sent out of the country.[222] Since then no mission work is allowed to exist, for it is hardly possible to call by such a name what is being done by the Orthodox Church, its work aiming rather at political than spiritual results; at least so we were told by a Russian lady. It has no definite mission as in Siberia for the Mohammedans. I met this lady in the street, and she stopped me to inquire if I happened to be Miss C.; she had been asked to look out for her, the only address furnished being “Central Asia.” She proved to be a Red Cross nurse, travelling in Central Asia with the object of doing work for the Bible Society, and ascertaining what opening there was for mission work. Her nationality and right of entrance into all Government hospitals gave her special facility for doing this, and she found the people quite friendly and inclined to talk on religious topics, but the officials stood in the way. The Russian Consul told her frankly he didn’t like missionaries, but he admitted that he knew none and could give no grounds for his objection.

Bokhara “the Noble” has always been the centre of religious influence since Islam first conquered it about A.D. 709 (Arabian invasion), and to-day it boasts a rigid adherence to the letter of the Koran, surpassing that of any other place. Before the Arabian invasion Central Asia was Christian. The Nestorian Church had established episcopal sees in Merv and Samarkand as early as the fifth century, and the whole country had practically adopted Christianity. After it had become Moslem the Mongols[223] swept down upon it in the thirteenth century. “In Bokhara, so famed for its men of piety and learning, the Mongols stabled their horses in the sacred precincts of the mosques, and tore up the Korans to serve as litter; those of the inhabitants who were not butchered were carried away into captivity, and their city reduced to ashes. Such, too, was the fate of Samarkand, Balkh, and many another city of Central Asia.”[8] The Moslem faith, however, survived the storm. When the Arabian Mohammedan leadership had become weakened about the middle of the eleventh century it passed into the hands of the Turanians, and they now showed their power by winning their conquerors over to Islamism in a singularly short space of time.

As one strolls through the streets of Bokhara to-day, one sees and hears nothing but Mohammedanism. The civil administration is entirely in the hands of the religious orders, and the madressahs, with the exception of El Azhar at Cairo, are the most important in the world. There are said to be 365 madressahs, but in reality there is not a third of that number. The dates of some of these are 1372 (Abdullah’s), 1426, 1529, 1582; and the Empress Catherine of Russia founded one in the eighteenth century. Vambéry says that nowhere in the East had he found the Moslems so punctilious about the externals of religion, even to repeating their prayers stark-naked for fear their clothes should have been[224] defiled in any way without their being aware of it. Their ruling principle is “man must make a figure; no one cares for what he thinks!” We saw the shockingly dirty tanks where so much religious washing goes on, and they were revolting beyond words. The text of Islam says that where there are more than 120 pints of water it is “blind,” that is to say the dirt gets lost in it. Consequently you see people washing out their ears, noses, and mouths in the filthiest tanks adjoining mosques before reciting their prayers, which they do at least five times a day. The consequence of this is that the inhabitants constantly suffer from tapeworm, which the French call by the more pleasing name “solitare.”

A large part of the population of Bokhara belongs to the religious orders, and are known as Ishans, Mullahs, and Reis. They belong to the Sunnite faction, and have an utter abhorrence of Persian Moslems, who do not belong to that sect; they maintain the same standard of religious asceticism as that of the Middle Ages, and are prepared to fight just as in those days. It is hard to realise that they are utterly untouched by modernism, and the barbarism of Bokhara is unspeakable. Needless to say, we did not visit the prison—descriptions of it can be read in every book dealing with the place, but it does not bear thinking of when we remember that Englishmen were literally rotting away there, “masses of their flesh having been gnawn off their bones by vermin in 1843” (Wolff). The citadel has no less[225] hideous tales to tell: indeed Bokhara is one of the most degraded places on the face of the earth according to all accounts.

Vambéry’s description of what he saw only half a century ago leaves no room for doubt on this subject. He heard the robes which were to be awarded to successful soldiers described as “four-head,” “ten-head,” or “twenty-head” robes, and seeing no such design on them inquired the meaning of the term. For all answer he was taken to see the arrival of the conquerors; they had women captives tied to their saddle bows as well as great sacks. These were filled with human heads, and each man in turn had these hideous trophies counted, and the number placed upon the official list to be the measure of the reward he should receive. The lot of the slaves is a terrible one, and slavery still exists, being a thing wholly approved and sanctioned by the Koran. The law of Harem is observed with the utmost stringency, and women of the upper class are kept closely secluded. If a girl is allowed to go out at all, she must not only be veiled, but must put on the appearance of age and decrepitude, walking with a stick on tottering footsteps. Although not compelled to do so as in the case of women, the men also cultivate assiduously the art of a special step, which is known as the “Reftari khiraman”: their poets describe it as the[226] swaying of a cypress in the wind, but to us it appears as an ungainly waddle. David Cox was clever enough to make the dogs bark in his sketches, but I, alas, cannot make my man waddle!

The law of Islam prohibits drunkenness, but “the number of beng eaters (beng is a drug made from cannabis Indica) is greatest in Bokhara and Khokand, and it is no exaggeration to say that three-fourths of the learned and official world, or in other words the whole intelligent class, are victims to this vice. The Government looks on with perfect indifference while hundreds, nay thousands, commit suicide.... The few hints we have thrown out are sufficient to show the abyss of crime to which an exaggerated fanaticism degrades mankind” (Vambéry’s “Travels in Central Asia”). Bokhara is still the same to-day, the most fanatical and the most corrupt city in Asia, though outwardly to the eye of the casual stranger clothed with the respectability that its European masters exact.

We penetrated into the bazaars, but they offered no special features of interest, Bokhara having like the other cities of Central Asia to a large extent lost its ancient skill in art. The silks sold in it are made in Moscow mainly, and the cottons are also European. The railway and the protective tariff have combined to kill the old trade that used to exist between Bokhara and India, passing over the trade route through Afghanistan. The fine architecture all belongs to the past. One of the mosques was ornamented with[227] beautiful designs in brickwork, enhanced by a fine note of colour near the top of the minarets in green tiles. The colour ornamentation of the mosques is for the most part much more restrained than that of Samarkand, but seen in the midst of the uniform dust colour of its sun-dried bricks it is the more effective. There are not nearly so many trees as at Samarkand, though outside one of the city gates we found a shady road, and there are twelve large canals in the neighbourhood to supply the gardens as well as the ordinary drinking supply. A crowd of camels was waiting hard by; presumably they remain outside the city because the streets are too narrow and tortuous to be blocked by such unwieldy beasts. There was an elevated booth on the other side of the gate where the gay throng seemed to be engaged in the act of worship and pleasure simultaneously; but the foreground of the picture was filled up with a compact mass of graves, looking as if they were centuries old.

The largest building in the city is the mosque of Kelan, built by Tamerlane, and there are many other mosques varying in size and interest. We climbed up to the roof of one for the sake of the view, but it was not much, and we were told that we should have gone up a tower for the purpose. Almost every minaret is surmounted by a stork’s nest, for Bokhara is noted for its storks.

As we came away we saw a string of covered carts with gay carpets over them making their way to the station. They were backed up to a siding, where[228] the veiled beauties within them were rapidly transferred to second-class carriages away from the public gaze. Then the gay coverings were folded up and put in the luggage van, and the carriages were brought round and attached to our train; evidently they contained people of importance, for there was a large crowd of natives to see them off, and on reaching Kazan their carriages were again detached preparatory to being joined to the express as soon as it arrived. Many Persians are to be found throughout Turkestan; the railway stations are crowded with them, and our Russian Red Cross nurse told us a charming idyllic story which I cannot forbear repeating, of one of their veiled beauties with whom she had talked on her journey. The Persian lady was a princess travelling with her husband on their honeymoon. The husband said they had seen one another seven years ago in a garden, and had fallen deeply in love. Owing to his inferior rank the princess’s father would not hear of their marriage, and it was only after seven years that his consent was at last obtained. “She is not beautiful as she was then,” he continued, but there was a look of great tenderness on both their faces, showing that the love at all events had not diminished, and they further explained that they had determined to have a European honeymoon, and were now on their travels. Another happy couple whom our friend met was guarded by the wife’s stalwart brothers. The husband and wife had been married nine years and were still deeply in love,[229] but they were very sad because the wife (aged twenty-one) had as yet no son. They were now on a pilgrimage to pray for one, as the husband said he had not taken a second wife, nor did he wish to do so, “but, of course, if Providence did not send a son——.” He repudiated the idea that as a Mohammedan he might be expected to have four wives if he chose, and said he was very fond of his present wife. Certainly the position of women is the worst evil of Mohammedanism, taken in connection with Mohammed’s own history, and in the light of the teaching of the Koran.

It might have been hoped that Russian influence would have had some effect in ameliorating things; but even the Russophile Skrine[9] admits that it has had no civilizing influence on the Khanate of Bokhara. Slavery, tyranny, and barbarism are still allowed free scope, in order that their disintegrating effect may the more readily place it under Russian dominion.

We left Kazan for the homeward journey, intending only to stop at Vienna on the way, but fate decreed otherwise. The train started in the evening, and we travelled two nights and a day through flat country to the Caspian Sea. The railway through Turkestan runs parallel first with the Afghan frontier—across which no Russian dare step on pain of his life—and then parallel with the Persian border. The mountains of Persia formed a beautiful outline against the stormy sky as we passed through Askabad, the southernmost point of the line, and when the rain came down in blinding torrents we watched the patient camels and their drivers on the plain, behaving as if completely oblivious of the storm. Not so the Cossack on his fiery steed; he looked as if possessed by the storm demon, tearing across the plain as if the furies were behind him. A land of strange contrasts—the immovable calm of the East, and, vainly beating against it, the restless West. The question forces itself irresistibly upon the mind—which will conquer?

The sun shone brightly next morning as we woke[231] on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and it looked calm and inviting, so different from the description of his stormy journey given by Anthony Jenkinson in the sixteenth century. He says: “This sea is freshwater in many places, and in other places as salt as our great Ocean. It hath many goodly Rivers falling into it, and it avoideth not itselfe except it be underground. During the time of our Navigation wee set up the redde crosse of S. George in our flagges, for honour of the Christians, which I suppose was never seen in the Caspian Sea before.” The terminus of the railway line is a miserable little sun-baked village called Krasnovodsk, with only one imposing edifice, the railway station. We took our things at once to the boat, through a maze of railway trucks and carriages, and were delighted to find it a comfortable little steamer, with a Finnish captain who had served long on English ships and looked like a Scotchman. There was a gigantic sturgeon lying on the landing-stage, and he told us some have been caught in the Caspian Sea weighing two tons. Our voyage only lasted about thirteen hours, but none of the passengers save myself faced dinner, and I was surprised to see next morning that there had been some eight or nine on board. During the night a little child died, so there was a delay while the health officer made his inquiry, and we were all duly inspected.

The view of Baku, although seen through driving rain, was eminently picturesque, and the old ruined maiden’s tower (in the centre of my sketch) which[232] is close to the wharf stands up boldly from amongst the modern buildings. Forty years ago Baku was a small town with its picturesque eastern quarter, but now it is a city boasting more than a quarter of a million inhabitants, as cosmopolitan as a seaport on the Mediterranean. The extraordinary change is of course due to the discovery of oil, which has brought wealth, ugliness, and other undesirable things to the surrounding country.

The country round Baku is hideous, a sort of eruption of oil derricks covers miles of it. These are pyramidal buildings like square mill chimneys, only considerably thicker at the base, and there are no less than 2000 at Balakhani closely packed together. There is such an abundance of oil that in many parts it is only necessary to make a hole in the ground with a stick and a jet of flame will rise in the air. On still nights it is possible to set light to the oil which gathers on the surface of the sea. No wonder that the Parsees worshipped the strange fire, and there still exists a curious temple at a place called Surakhany, about half a day’s journey from Baku, where the so-called “eternal fires” burn, though the last worshippers left it some quarter of a century ago. The modern spirit has changed it into a profitable petroleum factory.

The town is evidently well worth seeing, but the pitiless rain drove us to the Hotel d’Europe, and we were glad to resume our journey, deciding to go round by Tiflis instead of direct from Baku to Vienna.[233] There is a through train to the frontier, Volochisk, which takes four nights and three days, and from thence it is another day and night journey to Vienna. We were told that it would be only a difference of hours if we took the other route, and that by so doing we could see the magnificent pass through the Caucasus, travelling from Tiflis to Vladikavkaz by public automobile. It was impossible in Baku to ascertain anything definite as to the hours of starting or arriving of the automobile, but as our train was due at 6.30 A.M. we fondly imagined we should be in time to catch it. Nothing of the sort. With Russian perversity it started in connection with no train, but at 6 A.M. We could hardly regret the delay, however, for we found ourselves in such comfortable quarters at the quiet Hotel de Londres, which had been recommended to us, and we should have appreciated it the more had we known then that they were the last beds we should occupy till we reached London a week later.

Tiflis is well worth a visit: it is situated on the lofty banks of a tumultuous river, and its green and red roofs, varied by the gleaming domes of the churches, are most picturesque. There is a large number of these, and Tiflis has become the home of many religious refugees, for in order to stamp out heresy, orthodox Russia exiles her Baptists, Stundists, &c., to the outlying parts of the empire, such as Siberia and the Caucasus. It boasts a fine German church, also a Swedish mission, and a depôt of the Bible Society. The Swedish missionaries[234] have been working there for twenty-two years, but are not allowed by the Government to have any medical or educational work, which greatly limits their usefulness. It is hard work, but bravely done.

Tiflis is noted for its sulphur baths, and attracts many visitors from different parts of Russia on that account. After a drive round the town we went up the funicular railway, and from the summit a magnificent panoramic view is to be had, for Tiflis is in the heart of the mountains. The ruins of the old walls can be traced on the north side of the river, and the old Georgian fortress, now included in the botanical garden. Tiflis was founded in the fifth century, and became the capital of the Georgian kingdom in the beginning of the sixth century. It fell into the hands of Russia in 1801, and the feelings of the Georgians are still intensely bitter after a century of foreign rule. It is a cosmopolitan city, and Professor Brugsch estimates that seventy languages may be heard in it. One unusual feature of the population is that the men are double the number of the women.

At 5.30 next morning we set out for the automobile and secured our seats; it was a covered car to seat nine passengers, but we were only six, which certainly seemed a sufficient load for the road we had to cover. The earlier part of the way we sped through pretty wooded country, with picturesque villages and ruined fortresses dotted among the crags on either side of the road. They were not so numerous as to punctuate the scenery in the way they do on the Rhine, but just to remind[235] one that this was the Georgian military road in the old days. Our chauffeur was a good one, but unfortunately his hooter was as hoarse as a raven and not even as loud, so that there was no means of warning the vehicles ahead, which caused constant delay on the narrow road. Before we had proceeded far we saw a comical accident owing to the soft condition of the road; a private motor car on one side and a cart on the other had each sunk deep into the soil in trying to avoid one another. Fortunately there was plenty of assistance at hand, for the cart belonged to a party of emigrants, and soon both vehicles were dug out and pushed on to solid ground.

The day was beautiful, and the scent of hawthorn, wild roses and thyme, yellow azalea and lime-trees filled the air, and the scenery became increasingly wild and beautiful. After three hours’ drive we halted for half-an-hour near a town on the outskirts of which musketry practice was going on, then we began the main ascent of the pass. The road became very steep, and the air cold and damp as we zig-zagged up the mountain. There were brilliant patches of kingcups, and amongst them beautiful tall snowdrops in great profusion. Instead of cultivated land there were pastures full of flocks of sheep and goats, shepherded by bright-looking boys. Of all the passes I have seen in Europe this is certainly the finest. One seems to be right amongst the snow fields, and the road sometimes passes between high walls of snow or through sheds built with great solidity. We stopped one hour[236] for lunch at the village where we met the automobile going the reverse way, and again later at the foot of Mt. Kasbec for another half-hour. Kasbec is 16,546 feet in height, namely, 100 feet higher than Mont Blanc. On its slope there is a typical Caucasian village, as seen in the sketch. From the time when we started on the down-hill road, however, we lost all pleasure in the scenery. Our driver suddenly became utterly reckless under the influence (as we learnt later on) of pressure brought to bear on him by one of the passengers, who wanted to arrive early at Vladikavkaz. We simply dashed down the road and round corners, at the imminent peril of our necks, scattering horses and carts in wild confusion into the ditch or up banks to what seemed to be certain destruction. Only once did the chauffeur stop, on the demand of a man with a rifle; he admitted that he was frightened, for not long ago the auto had been held up by brigands. It was a momentary pause, however, and we dashed on as recklessly as before. Finally on entering the town a horse took fright and dragged its cart into the ditch, overturning it completely, but the chauffeur merely smiled and drove on. How thankful we were to draw up safely at last at the Grand Hotel at Vladikavkaz at 6 P.M. We had some hours to spare before our train started, so we made our way to the telegraph office in order to wire home. The polite clerk, in answer to our inquiry, said that it took much less time to telegraph to England than to any place in Russia, and that it would probably be delivered in London in an hour’s[237] time; in point of fact, the telegram was never delivered at all. German we found the foreign language best understood in Russia, and for the benefit of inexperienced travellers I will conclude my volume with a brief account of our crossing the frontier.

At Tiflis we gave up our passports (according to regulation) to the hotel-keeper, stating where we had come from and our next halting place, namely Vienna. The police have to put their official signatures on the passport wherever you stop on Russian soil, but also in addition something further when you wish to leave the country, and every time the passport is visé-ed the traveller has to pay. We presumed that this had been properly done at Tiflis, having paid for it, but when we reached Volochisk and the officials came for all the passengers’ passports, they looked at ours and returned them to us in a rough, surly way, saying something that we could not understand, instead of carrying them off with the others. Every one was locked up in the train, and in due course of time the officials returned with the passports and gave them back to their owners. They pointed us to the door, and proceeded to put our luggage out. A lady from an adjoining carriage came and explained the situation; the passports had not been properly signed for leaving the country, and we should have to telegraph to the police at Tiflis before we should be allowed to leave. “How long will it take?” we asked in dismay. “Oh! not more than three or four days!” We inquired if there was no method of tipping by which we could escape such a dismal prospect,[238] but she was emphatic in denying it. She suggested, however, that by treble payment we could send a quick telegram instead of a slow one, and she got her husband to go and explain our sad condition to the officer in charge of the station. He was fortunately able to speak a little German, and he ordered an underling to go and write the necessary telegram to the police at Tiflis. The little colonel was in full regimentals, and wore spurs, and the station had a military guard; he had to be there on arrival of every train apparently, and acted as stationmaster. He reassured us by saying that we might hope for an answer in the course of the afternoon (it was now about ten in the morning), in which case we could take the evening train to Vienna. We had the melancholy satisfaction of finding that we were not the only people whose passports were unsatisfactory; in fact no one seemed surprised about it except ourselves. We tried to beguile the weary hours by watching the custom-house officials enjoying themselves over the parcel post; a number of muslin dress lengths were unpacked and inspected, as well as sundry other things. The restaurant was a source of amusement as well as comfort to us, and was far superior to an English one at a similar station. At long intervals trains arrived, and we visited the telegraph office from time to time.

We studied the “toilette” that went on in the ladies’ waiting-room, and when night came and still no answer, we debated what to do next. At 9.30 we saw our hopes of a comfortable bed next night[239] disappear, but we still felt it would be well to leave at 2.30 A.M. if fate permitted. The “hotel,” a small cottage within sight of the station, we did not fancy, so we resigned ourselves to the small rest obtainable on a wooden bench and the window ledge. Every time a train arrived the colonel appeared also, and I fear he got rather tired of our polite request for information; the importunate widow would have had no chance with him. What an extraordinary occupation for an officer; but he sought to beguile the time by hob-nobbing with the large staff of employees who, doubtless for an absurdly small wage, spend most of the twenty-four hours loafing about the railway.

At last the night ended, and we saw with pity a group of emigrants trying to breakfast under a dull drizzling sky opposite the station. A friendly porter gave us the news we were longing for—a telegram had arrived. No words can express our delight, for we seemed to know every stone of that railway platform, and we rushed to the office to demand our passports, of which the officials had taken possession. Our detention had lasted twenty-four hours, and as we shook the dust from our feet we failed not to be thankful for the Providence which caused us to be citizens of a land of liberty instead of tyranny. It is only in Russia that one thoroughly realises it; and the irksomeness of it becomes intolerable. “Implicit obedience, silent subjection, and the irresistible power of despotism are here brought home effectively to the[240] stranger. But this impression remains with the traveller throughout the entire journey—

An Empire of one hundred and thirty millions of prisoners and of one million gaolers—such is Russia.”

• Abdullah, 190
• Afforestation, 177
• Afghanistan, 226, 230
• Agriculture in Korea, 125
• in Siberia, 173
• Alexander the Great, 203
• American Missions, 68, 80
• Amir of Bokhara, 201, 203, 221
• Amu Daria, 183
• Amur region, 158
• Ancestor worship, 70, 86
• Angara River, 155
• An-san, 103
• Antung, 58, 61, 73
• Aphrosiab, 219
• Arabian Invasion, Turkestan, 223
• Mohammedanism, 223
• Aral Sea, 174, 175
• Arctic Ocean, 162, 163
• Arithmetic, 38
• Arnold, 223
• Asceticism, Mohammedan, 224
• Ashekhabat, 160
• Ashiho, Ch. xiii.
• Askabad, 230
• Astor House, Moukden, 31
• Australasia, 38
• Australian Presbyterians, 79, 108
• Azerbijana, 198
• Baber, 195
• Baghdad, 195
• Baikal, Lake, 154, 159, 162
• Bajazet, Sultan, 200
• Baku, 231-233
• Balak Nani, 223
• Balkh, 223
• Baltic fleet, 112
• Baptists, 233
• Baths, Chinese, 142
• Sulphur, 234
• Bazaars, 185, 214, 226
• Behren, 22
• Beng, 226
• Bibi Khanum, 209-213
• Little, 210, 213
• Bible Society, B. and F., 161, 173, 174, 222, 233
• Study, 38, 75, 77, 82
• Women, 77, 143
• Black Sea, 169, 174
• Blanc, Edouard, 191, 218
• Blanc, Mont, 236
• Blind, 49, 81
• Bokhara, Ch. xx., 176, 183, 201, 208, 215, 218
• Boxers, 22, 23
• Braille, 81
• Bronzes, 21, 22
• Broussa, 201
• Browning, 175
• Brugnière, Monseigneur, 89, 90
• Brugsch, 234
• Buddhism, 45, 70
• Buddhists, 48, 49, 57, 159
• Buriats, 159-162
• Burkans, 160
• [242]Bushnell, 21
• Camels, 214, 227
• Cano, Empress, 198, 199, 209-213
• Capus, 172, 182
• Carpets, 209, 217
• Carts in Turkestan, 181
• Caspian Sea, 175, 231
• Catherine of Russia, 223
• Caucasus, Ch. xxi.
• Chang Chun, 8
• Chang Shan, 47, 51
• Chéliabinsk, 166
• Chemkend, 183
• Chemulpo, 134-137
• Chiao, Mr., 67, 114, 122, 130, 133, 177
• Child burial, 42, 43
• “Chinese Art,” 21
• generosity, 25, 27
• industry, 125
• windows, 101
• writing, 63, 68, 121, 124
• Ching dynasty, 18
• Christie, Dr., 23, 26
• Church, Chemulpo, 136
• Liao Yang, 40, Ch. iv., 56
• Moukden, 22
• Pyöng Yang, 74-77
• Tiflis, 233
• Citadel of Samarkand, 201, 203
• Clavijo, 195, 197, 199, 210
• College, Union, 78, 79
• Colonisation, Manchuria, 6, 34
• Siberia, 158
• Colporteurs, 173, 174
• Commercial college, 55
• Concessions, timber, 73
• mining, 61
• Confucianism, 70, 77
• Conference, Edinburgh World Missionary, 50, 80
• Constantinople, 186
• Consul, English, 17, 20, 141
• Convicts, 155, 158
• Cossacks, 165, 230
• Court life, Korea, 96-101
• Crops in Manchuria, 7, 45
• Korea, 107
• Crown Prince, Korea, 98-99
• Princess, 99
• Crypt, Tamerlane’s Tomb, 192
• Currency, 33, 40, 213
• Custom-house, 151, 152, 238
• Curtin, Jeremiah, 159-162
• Dallet, Père, 92
• Dalny, 138-140
• Steamer to, 134, 135
• Damascus, 200
• Danish Lutheran Mission, 27
• Daveluy, 91
• “Deer’s horns,” 22, 29
• Delhi, 195, 196
• Diamond Mountains, Ch. xii.
• Dnieper River, 174
• Don River, 174
• Doolittle, 31
• Durrieux, 212
• Ear-muffs, 5, 26
• Education, Korea, 53, 61, 79, 81, 128, 129
• Manchuria, 28, 37, 38
• Medical, 27
• Moslem, 145, 204-208, 223, 224
• Russian, 164, 165, 182, 206
• Siberia, 162, 164
• [243]Theological, Korea, 79
• Elephants, 198
• Elms, 178, 215
• Emperor, late Chinese, 23
• Korean, 73, 96-100, 102
• Empress Cano, 198-200, 209-213
• late Dowager, China, 23
• Min, Korea, 98-102
• Emigrants, Chinese, 34
• English language, 140
• Eunuchs, 97, 99, 101
• Execution, 144, 208
• Exiles, 233
• “Face of Korea,” 65-148
• Fauvelle, 212
• Flowers, Caucasus, 235
• Korea, 107, 117, 123
• Manchuria, 52
• Foo Ling tombs, 12, 16-19
• Fox temples, 31, 32, 45
• Fusan, Ch. xi.
• Gale, Dr., 103
• Genghiz Khan, 145, 194, 195, 204
• Geography, 38
• Georgians, 234, 235
• German Church, 233
• language, 140, 188, 237
• Giggies, 67
• “Gluttonous Place,” 208
• Gold mining, 63, 156
• Grain market, 213
• Gur Amir, 189-192
• Hazret, 175
• Hazréti Shah Zindeh, 215-217
• Hazréti Timur mosque, 175
• “Heart of Asia,” 229
• Hell, Temple of, 32, 48
• Herbelot, 205
• Hingking, 12
• Hissar, 214
• Histoire de l’Église de Korée, 84
• Holden, 195
• “Home of Tamerlane,” Ch. xviii.
• Horse sacrifice, 160
• Hospitals: Hsin Muntun, 34, 35
• Chemulpo, 136, 137
• Liao Yang, 48
• Moukden, 23-28
• Hotels: Astor House, Moukden, 31
• Commercial, Kazan, 220
• d’Europe, Kazan, 220
• Baku, 232
• de France, Tashkent, 178
• Grand, Samarkand, 188
• Vladikavkaz, 236
• Londres, Tiflis, 233
• Russian, Kharbin, 3
• Yamato, Kwan-cheng-tze, 8
• Hsin Muntun, 25, Ch. iii.
• Hulan, Ch. i., 142
• “Hunger Desert,” 188
• Immigrants, 174
• India, 194-196, 198, 226
• International Sleeping Car, 148, 152
• Invocation, Buriat, 160, 161
• Iranian, 184
• Irish Presbyterian, 27
• Irkutsk, 155-157, 164
• Irtish River, 164
• Ishan, 224
• Islam, 194, 196, 218, 222, 224, 226
• Ito, Prince, 106
• [244]Ivan the Terrible, 194
• Jade, 21, 191
• Jagatai, 185
• Japanese banks, 104, 105, 138
• inns, 60, 61
• occupation of Korea, 105
• of Dalny, 138, 139
• officers, 59, 107, 131
• steamers, 111, 134, 137
• trade, 139
• traveller, 59, 60
• war, Korea, 85
• Russia, 42, 43, 73
• Jaxartes, 175
• Jenkinson, 231
• Jesuits, 85, 146
• Jews, 145, 156
• “Journey in Southern Siberia,” 161
• Kaaba, 216
• Karagatch, 215
• Kasbec, Mount, 236
• Katholische Missions Statistik, 92
• Kazan, 176, 220, 221, 228
• Kelan, 227
• Keuk Tash, 201
• Kharbin, 3, 4, 57, 141, 148, 167, 178
• Khiva, 122, 183
• Khojend, 183, 185
• Khokand, 183, 226
• Khorasan, 194
• Ki Cha, 68, 71, 72
• Kil Moksa, 77, 78
• Kim, André, 91
• Kinel, 167-169
• Kirghiz, 165, 172, 175
• Steppes, 172
• Kitchener, 45
• Kite-flying, 46
• Kobdo, 163
• Koran, 189, 206, 212, 216, 225, 229
• Korea, history, 72, 73
• population, 62, 63
• size, 62
• war with China, 73
• Japan, 85
• Korean education, 63, 79, 81, 128, 129
• dress, 71, 76, 94, 96, 100
• gate, Liao Yang, 42, 43
• generosity, 80, 83
• hats, 69
• official life, 96, 97
• products, 63, 107
• script, 63
• shops, 68
• “Sketches,” 103
• water-carriers, 69
• Krasnojarsk, 162
• Krasnovodsk, 231
• Krapotkin, 164, 184
• Krose, 92
• Kûfic, 190
• Kurgan, 166
• “Kuropatkin’s Eye,” 44
• Kwan-cheng-tze, 6, 40
• Land nationalisation, 157, 158
• Li Dsuchung, 13
• Liao Tong, 42, 138
• Liao Yang, 12, 40, Ch. iv.
• Lobanoff, 73
• Long White Mountains, 23
• Louis, Saint, 197
• Madressah, 187, 223
• [245]Bibi Khanum, 209-213, 216
• El Azhar, 223
• Ishrak Khaneh, 219
• Khodja Akhrar, 219
• Shir Dar, 207
• Tilla Kari, 204, 208, 209
• Timur Malik, 219
• Uleg Beg, 204-207
• Manchester, 214
• Manchus, The, 11-15, 42
• Manchu dress, 14, 36
• dynasty, 11, 12, 14, 43
• history, 11-15
• inns, 52
• marriage, 15
• policy, 13
• Manchuria town, 3
• “Manchuria’s Strategic Railway,” 59
• Medical Missions, 23-28, 48, 142, 143
• assistants, 26, 48, 137
• training college, 26, 27
• Medicines, Chinese, 46, 47
• Merv, 222
• Mesnevi, 225
• Methodist Episcopal, 80
• Ming dynasty, 13, 20
• tombs, 19, 20
• Mining concessions, 63
• Mission, American Methodist Episcopal, 80, 81
• American Presbyterian, 79
• Australian Presbyterian, 79, 108
• Canadian Presbyterian, 79
• Danish Lutheran, 27
• Greek Orthodox Church, 161, 165, 222
• Irish Presbyterian, 29, 36-39
• Scotch Presbyterian 7, 27, 48, 50
• Roman Catholic, 64, Ch. x., 104, 136
• Salvation Army, 104
• Swedish Mission, 221, 233
• Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 89, 136, 137
• “Missions Etrangères,” 89
• Mistletoe, 18, 19
• Moffett, Dr., 79
• “Mogul Emperors of Hindustan,” 195
• Mohammedan mosques, 145, 185, 186, 219, 226, 227
• schools, 145, 187, 204-208
• Mohammedanism, China, 145, 146
• Bokhara, 223, 224, 229
• Siberia, 165, 166, 171
• Turkestan, 185, 186, 206, 225, 226, 229
• Monasteries, 52, 53, 57, 121
• Mongol customs, 160
• empire, 195
• raids, 194, 223
• Monks, 53, 56, 57, 120-122
• Moscow, 214, 226
• Moukden, Ch. ii., 58
• Mullah, 191, 206, 215, 224
• Museums, 22, 60
• Nadir Shah, 191
• Naval commission, 26
• battle, 112, 136
• Nestorian Church, 222
• Newchwang, 25, 55
• New Hebrides, 109
• Nippon Yusen Kaisha, 137
• [246]Noorhachu, 11, 12, 18
• Officers, Japanese, 59, 107, 123, 124, 131
• Russian, 238, 239
• Oil fields, 232
• Omsk, 164
• Ongons, 159
• Orenburg, 166, 171
• Orthodox Church, 161, 165, 222
• Othman, 212
• Oxus River, 183
• Oyama, General, 25
• Pailow, 19
• Palace, Moukden, 20-22
• Samarkand, 211-213, 215, 216
• Seoul, 93-102
• Parsees, 232
• Passports, 237, 239
• Peasants, Russian, 172, 173
• Pedlars, Korean, 129
• Peking, 13-15, 19, 43, 168
• Permits, 176
• Persians, 185, 201, 209, 228
• architecture, 189, 190, 198
• Petropavlosk, 165
• Pichtack, 205
• Piek-i, 85, 86
• Pioneer Point, 71
• Police, Russian, 176, 237-239
• Poplars, 178, 215
• Population, Korea, 62, 63
• Siberia, 157, 158
• Tashkent, 181
• Tiflis, 234
• Porcelain, 21, 22
• Port Nicolas, 73
• “Preaching of Islam,” 223
• Presbyterians, 7, 27, 34-37, 79, 108
• Prisons, 88, 155, 224
• Protestant Missions, 64, 73
• Psalm reader, 165
• Pyöng Yang, 62, Ch. vii., viii.
• Raleigh, Sir Walter, 21
• Railway, Japanese, 8, 40, 51, Ch. vi., 105, 107, 108, 135
• Russian, 8, 167, 173, 174, 220
• South Manchurian, 34, 35
• Trans-Siberian, Ch. xv.
• International Sleeping Car Co., 152, 153, 157
• Russian State Express, 152, 153, 157, 166
• Red Cross, 25, 174, 222
• Reftari khiraman, 225
• Refugees, Moukden, 24
• Reis, 224
• Remedios, Jean dos, 87
• Righistan, 204, 212
• Ritual worship, 21
• Roman Catholics, 64, Ch. ix., 104
• Ross, Dr., 13
• Rubruquis, de, 197-199
• Russians, 203, 217, 221, 229, 230
• occupation (Moukden), 23
• police, 176, 237-239
• Russo-Japanese war, 42, 73, 136
• Sacrée Congrégation de la Propagande, 89
• Saïd, Mir Berke, 191
• Sámánids, 204
• Samara, 167
• Samarkand, 183, 187, Ch. xix., 222
• [247]la bien gardée, 212, 218
• Sarts, 184, 202, 203, 206, 218
• Schools, 37, 38, 81, 129, 145, 164, 187, 204-208
• Seminary, Paris, 92
• Senghoun-i, 85, 86
• Seoul, Ch. x., 131, 132, 134, 135
• “Seven Hates,” 11, 12
• Shahr-i-Sabz, 193
• Shamanism, 70, 159
• Sheep, Kirghiz Steppes, 172
• Shimonoseki, 110
• Shinto, 110
• Shops, 16, 68, 69, 180, 214
• Siberia, 154-170
• climate, 154
• crops, 159
• land tenure, 158
• missions, 165
• native inhabitants, 159, 165
• population, 157, 158, 162
• size, 158
• trade, 156
• Silks, 210, 214
• Skrine, 229
• Slavery, 225, 229
• Smith, Dr. Arthur, 43 note
• “Social Life of the Chinese,” 31
• Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 104, 136, 137
• Songdo, 81
• South Kensington Museum, 22
• Storks, 184, 227
• Stundists, 233
• Sulphur baths, 234
• Sungari River, 3, 5
• Sunnites, 224
• Surakhany, 232
• Swedish Mission, 221, 233
• Syr Daria, 175, 200
• Taidsoo, 12
• Taiga, 164
• Tamerlane, 175, Ch. xviii., 201, 204
• Tang Shan, 25
• Taoist temple, 54
• Tartars, 162
• Tashkent, 168, 170, 176, Ch. xvii., 203, 206
• Ta-tsing, 13
• “Ten Parts Imperfect One,” 48
• Teragai, 193
• Tide, Korea, 112
• Tientsin, 91
• Tiflis, 232-234
• Time-table, 169
• Tobolsk, 165
• Tombs, Daniel’s, 217, 218
• Korean, 71, 102-104
• Ming, 13, 19, 20
• Moukden, 12, 16-19, 28-30
• Shah Zindeh’s, 215, 216
• Tamerlane’s, 189-193
• Tomsk, 163, 164, 174
• Tonghak, 73
• Toprach, 219
• Tortoise, 19
• Trans-Baikal, 154
• Translation Society, 162
• Trans-Siberian Railway, Ch. xv.
• Travel hints, 132, 133, 152, 153, 237
• “Travels in Central Asia,” 226
• Tschagu Tschiendogu, 120
• Tschang Do, 125
• Tsiou, 87, 88
• Turanians, 223
• “Turkestan, Into,” Ch. xvi.
• history, 183
• [248]town, 175
• Turks, 200
• Tycho-Brahé, 205
• Tyenaga, 59
• Uhér, 160
• Uleg Beg, 204, 205
• Union Medical College, Moukden, 27
• Union Theological Seminary, 78, 79
• United Free Church of Scotland, 27
• Un Mun, 61
• Usturdi, 160, 161
• Uzbegs, 175, 185
• Vambéry, 190, 223, 225
• Vienna, 169, 232, 233
• Vladivostock, 146, 162, 166
• Volga, 174
• Volochisk, 233, 237-239
• “Voyage of Friar William de Rubruquis,” 198
• Wagons Lits, 183
• War god, 70
• Water carriers, 70
• Watering roads, 183, 184
• Waterproofs, 131
• Waterworks, Japanese, 70
• Westwater, Dr., 46
• White Sea, 174
• Wiju, 59
• Wolff, 224
• Woman, 186
• Women’s Mission Work, 27, 28, 77, 142-144, 222
• Wonsan, 108, 111
• X-rays, 25
• Xavier, Francis, 146
• Yalu River, 59
• Yamaga, 73
• Yamato Hotel, Dalny, 138
• Kwan-cheng-tze, 6
• Yenisei River, 162, 163
• Young, Dr., 17
• Young Men’s Christian Association, 104, 132
• Yun, Hon. T. H., 61
• Zenedjin’s Tomb, 184
• Zenghiata’s Tomb, 184
• Zoological Gardens, 104

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