“If I wanted to die,” said one woman, meeting me as I was going round the compound one day in the early spring of 1914, “I would choose some easier way.”
But the doctor there was keenly interested. He would have liked to have gone himself, but his duty kept him alongside his patients and his hospital in Pao Ting Fu, and though he pulled himself up every now and then, remembering I was only a woman and probably couldn't do it, he could not but take as great an interest in that map and ways and means as I did myself. Then there was Mr. Long, a professor at the big Chinese college in the northern suburb—he was young and enthusiastic and as interested as Dr. Lewis.
He too knew something about travel in unknown China, for he had been one of the band of white men who had made their way over the mountains of Shansi and Shensi in the depths of winter to go to the rescue of the missionaries in Sui Te Chou and all the little towns down to Hsi An Fu at the time of the Revolution. Yes, he knew something of the difficulties of Chinese travel, and he thought I could do it.
“The only danger would be robbers, and—well, you know, there mightn't be robbers.”
But Peking—the Peking of the Legations—that, I knew, held different view's. I wrote to an influential man who had been in China over ten years, who spoke the language well, and he was against it.
“I was very much interested” (wrote he) “to read of your intention to do that trek across country. You ask my opinion about it, but I can only give you the same advice that Punch gave many years ago, and that is, don't. You must realise that the travelling will be absolutely awful and the cost is very great indeed. You have not yet forgotten your trip to Jehol, I hope, and the roughness of the road. The trip you contemplate will make the little journey to Jehol look like a Sunday morning walk in Hyde Park, particularly as regards travelling comfort, to say nothing about the danger of the journey as regards hostile tribes on the southern and western borders of Tibet. You will be passing near the Lolo country, and I can assure you that the Lolos are not a set of gentlemen within the meaning of the Act. They are distinctly hostile to foreigners, and many murders have taken place in their country that have not been published because of the inability of the Chinese troops to stand up against these people. What the peoples are like farther north I do not know, but I understand the Tibetans are not particularly trustworthy, and it will follow that the people living on their borders will inherit a good many of their vices and few of their virtues.
“If you have really made up your mind to go, however, just let me know, and I will endeavour to hunt up all the information that it is possible to collect as to the best route to take, etc., though I repeat I would not advise the journey, and the Geographical Society can go to the deuce.”
This not because he despised the Geographical Society by any means, but because I had advanced as one reason for going across Asia the desire to win my spurs so and be an acceptable member.
“My dear,” wrote a woman, “think of that poor young Brooke. The Tibetans cut his throat with a sharp stone, which is a pleasant little way they have.”
Now the man's opinion was worth having, but the woman's is a specimen of the loose way people are apt to reason—I do it myself—when they deal with the unknown. The “poor young Brooke” never went near Tibet, and was murdered about a thousand miles distant from the route I intended to take. It was something as if a traveller bound to the Hebrides was warned against dangers to be met upon the Rhone.
One man who had travelled extensively in Mongolia was strongly against the journey, but declared that “Purdom knew a great deal more about travelling in China” than he did, and if “Purdom” said I might got—well then, I might. Mr. Purdom and Mr. Reginald Farrer were going west to the borders of Tibet botanising, and one night I dined with them, and Mr. Purdom was optimistic and declared if I was prepared for discomfort and perhaps hardship he thought I might go.
So it was decided, and thereupon those who knew took me in hand and gave me all advice about travelling in China, how to minimise discomfort, what to take and what to leave behind. One thing they were all agreed upon. The Chinese, as a rule, are the most peaceable people upon earth, the only thing I had to fear was a chance band of robbers, and if I fell into their hands—well, it would probably be finish.
“The Chinese are fiendishly cruel,” said my friend of Mongolian travel; “keep your last cartridge for yourself.”
I intimated that a pistol was quite beyond me, that that way of going out did not appeal to me, and anyhow I'd be sure to bungle it.
“Then have something made up at the chemist's and keep it always on your person. You do not know how desperately you may need it.”
I may say here that these remarks made no impression upon me whatever. I suppose in most of us the feeling is strong that nothing bad could possibly happen. It happens to other people, we know, but to us—impossible! I have often wondered how near I could get to danger without feeling that it really threatened—pretty close, I suspect. It is probably a matter of experience. I cannot cross a London road with equanimity—but then twice have I been knocked down and rather badly hurt—but I gaily essayed to cross Asia by way of China, and would quite certainly as gaily try again did I get the chance. Only next time I propose to take a good cook.
To some, of course, the unknown is always full of danger.
The folks who walked about Peking without a qualm warned me I would die of indigestion, I would be unable to drink the water, the filth would be unspeakable, hydrophobia raged, and “when you are bitten, promptly cut deep into the place and insert a chloride of mercury tabloid.”
That last warning made me laugh. It reminded me of the time when as a little girl, living in a country where deadly snakes swarmed—my eldest brother killed sixty in a week, I remember, in our garden—I used to think it would be extremely dangerous to go to Europe because there were there mad dogs, things we never had in Australia! I think it was the reference to hydrophobia and the chloride of mercury tabloid helped me to put things in their proper prospective and made me realise that I was setting out on a difficult journey with a possible danger of robbers; but a possible danger is the thing we risk every day we travel in a railway train or on an electric tramcar. I am always ready for possible risks, it is when they become probable I bar them, so I set about my preparations with a quiet mind.
A servant. I decided I must have a tall servant and strong, because so often in China I found I had to be lifted, and I had suffered from having too small a man on my former journeys. The missionaries provided me with a new convert of theirs, a tall strapping Northern Chinaman, who was a mason by trade. Tsai Chih Fu, we called him—that is to say, he came of the Tsai family; and the Chih Fu—I'm by no means sure that I spell it right—meant a “master workman.” He belonged to a large firm of masons, but as he had never made a dollar a day at his trade, my offer of that sum put him at my service, ready to go out into the unknown. He was a fine-looking man, dignified and courteous, and I had and have the greatest respect for him. He could not read or write, of course. Now a man who cannot read or write here in the West we look upon with contempt, but it would be impossible to look upon Tsai Chih Fu with contempt. He was a responsible person, a man who would count in any company. He belonged to another era and another civilisation, but he was a man of weight. A master of transport in Babylon probably closely resembled my servant Tsai Chih Fu.
