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_ It was the beginning of February, new style, when we set out from
Pekin. My partner and the old pilot had gone express back to the
port where we had first put in, to dispose of some goods which we
had left there; and I, with a Chinese merchant whom I had some
knowledge of at Nankin, and who came to Pekin on his own affairs,
went to Nankin, where I bought ninety pieces of fine damasks, with
about two hundred pieces of other very fine silk of several sorts,
some mixed with gold, and had all these brought to Pekin against my
partner's return. Besides this, we bought a large quantity of raw
silk, and some other goods, our cargo amounting, in these goods
only, to about three thousand five hundred pounds sterling; which,
together with tea and some fine calicoes, and three camels' loads
of nutmegs and cloves, loaded in all eighteen camels for our share,
besides those we rode upon; these, with two or three spare horses,
and two horses loaded with provisions, made together twenty-six
camels and horses in our retinue.
The company was very great, and, as near as I can remember, made
between three and four hundred horses, and upwards of one hundred
and twenty men, very well armed and provided for all events; for as
the Eastern caravans are subject to be attacked by the Arabs, so
are these by the Tartars. The company consisted of people of
several nations, but there were above sixty of them merchants or
inhabitants of Moscow, though of them some were Livonians; and to
our particular satisfaction, five of them were Scots, who appeared
also to be men of great experience in business, and of very good
substance.
When we had travelled one day's journey, the guides, who were five
in number, called all the passengers, except the servants, to a
great council, as they called it. At this council every one
deposited a certain quantity of money to a common stock, for the
necessary expense of buying forage on the way, where it was not
otherwise to be had, and for satisfying the guides, getting horses,
and the like. Here, too, they constituted the journey, as they
call it, viz. they named captains and officers to draw us all up,
and give the word of command, in case of an attack, and give every
one their turn of command; nor was this forming us into order any
more than what we afterwards found needful on the way.
The road all on this side of the country is very populous, and is
full of potters and earth-makers--that is to say, people, that
temper the earth for the China ware. As I was coming along, our
Portuguese pilot, who had always something or other to say to make
us merry, told me he would show me the greatest rarity in all the
country, and that I should have this to say of China, after all the
ill-humoured things that I had said of it, that I had seen one
thing which was not to be seen in all the world beside. I was very
importunate to know what it was; at last he told me it was a
gentleman's house built with China ware. "Well," says I, "are not
the materials of their buildings the products of their own country,
and so it is all China ware, is it not?"--"No, no," says he, "I
mean it is a house all made of China ware, such as you call it in
England, or as it is called in our country, porcelain."--"Well,"
says I, "such a thing may be; how big is it? Can we carry it in a
box upon a camel? If we can we will buy it."--"Upon a camel!" says
the old pilot, holding up both his hands; "why, there is a family
of thirty people lives in it."
I was then curious, indeed, to see it; and when I came to it, it
was nothing but this: it was a timber house, or a house built, as
we call it in England, with lath and plaster, but all this
plastering was really China ware--that is to say, it was plastered
with the earth that makes China ware. The outside, which the sun
shone hot upon, was glazed, and looked very well, perfectly white,
and painted with blue figures, as the large China ware in England
is painted, and hard as if it had been burnt. As to the inside,
all the walls, instead of wainscot, were lined with hardened and
painted tiles, like the little square tiles we call galley-tiles in
England, all made of the finest china, and the figures exceeding
fine indeed, with extraordinary variety of colours, mixed with
gold, many tiles making but one figure, but joined so artificially,
the mortar being made of the same earth, that it was very hard to
see where the tiles met. The floors of the rooms were of the same
composition, and as hard as the earthen floors we have in use in
several parts of England; as hard as stone, and smooth, but not
burnt and painted, except some smaller rooms, like closets, which
were all, as it were, paved with the same tile; the ceiling and all
the plastering work in the whole house were of the same earth; and,
after all, the roof was covered with tiles of the same, but of a
deep shining black. This was a China warehouse indeed, truly and
literally to be called so, and had I not been upon the journey, I
could have stayed some days to see and examine the particulars of
it. They told me there were fountains and fishponds in the garden,
all paved on the bottom and sides with the same; and fine statues
set up in rows on the walks, entirely formed of the porcelain
earth, burnt whole.
As this is one of the singularities of China, so they may be
allowed to excel in it; but I am very sure they excel in their
accounts of it; for they told me such incredible things of their
performance in crockery-ware, for such it is, that I care not to
relate, as knowing it could not be true. They told me, in
particular, of one workman that made a ship with all its tackle and
masts and sails in earthenware, big enough to carry fifty men. If
they had told me he launched it, and made a voyage to Japan in it,
I might have said something to it indeed; but as it was, I knew the
whole of the story, which was, in short, that the fellow lied: so
I smiled, and said nothing to it. This odd sight kept me two hours
behind the caravan, for which the leader of it for the day fined me
about the value of three shillings; and told me if it had been
three days' journey without the wall, as it was three days' within,
he must have fined me four times as much, and made me ask pardon
the next council-day. I promised to be more orderly; and, indeed,
I found afterwards the orders made for keeping all together were
absolutely necessary for our common safety.
In two days more we passed the great China wall, made for a
fortification against the Tartars: and a very great work it is,
going over hills and mountains in an endless track, where the rocks
are impassable, and the precipices such as no enemy could possibly
enter, or indeed climb up, or where, if they did, no wall could
hinder them. They tell us its length is near a thousand English
miles, but that the country is five hundred in a straight measured
line, which the wall bounds without measuring the windings and
turnings it takes; it is about four fathoms high, and as many thick
in some places.
I stood still an hour or thereabouts without trespassing on our
orders (for so long the caravan was in passing the gate), to look
at it on every side, near and far off; I mean what was within my
view: and the guide, who had been extolling it for the wonder of
the world, was mighty eager to hear my opinion of it. I told him
it was a most excellent thing to keep out the Tartars; which he
happened not to understand as I meant it and so took it for a
compliment; but the old pilot laughed! "Oh, Seignior Inglese,"
says he, "you speak in colours."--"In colours!" said I; "what do
you mean by that?"--"Why, you speak what looks white this way and
black that way--gay one way and dull another. You tell him it is a
good wall to keep out Tartars; you tell me by that it is good for
nothing but to keep out Tartars. I understand you, Seignior
Inglese, I understand you; but Seignior Chinese understood you his
own way."--"Well," says I, "do you think it would stand out an army
of our country people, with a good train of artillery; or our
engineers, with two companies of miners? Would not they batter it
down in ten days, that an army might enter in battalia; or blow it
up in the air, foundation and all, that there should be no sign of
it left?"--"Ay, ay," says he, "I know that." The Chinese wanted
mightily to know what I said to the pilot, and I gave him leave to
tell him a few days after, for we were then almost out of their
country, and he was to leave us a little time after this; but when
he knew what I said, he was dumb all the rest of the way, and we
heard no more of his fine story of the Chinese power and greatness
while he stayed.
After we passed this mighty nothing, called a wall, something like
the Picts' walls so famous in Northumberland, built by the Romans,
we began to find the country thinly inhabited, and the people
rather confined to live in fortified towns, as being subject to the
inroads and depredations of the Tartars, who rob in great armies,
and therefore are not to be resisted by the naked inhabitants of an
open country. And here I began to find the necessity of keeping
together in a caravan as we travelled, for we saw several troops of
Tartars roving about; but when I came to see them distinctly, I
wondered more that the Chinese empire could be conquered by such
contemptible fellows; for they are a mere horde of wild fellows,
keeping no order and understanding no discipline or manner of it.
Their horses are poor lean creatures, taught nothing, and fit for
nothing; and this we found the first day we saw them, which was
after we entered the wilder part of the country. Our leader for
the day gave leave for about sixteen of us to go a hunting as they
call it; and what was this but a hunting of sheep!--however, it may
be called hunting too, for these creatures are the wildest and
swiftest of foot that ever I saw of their kind! only they will not
run a great way, and you are sure of sport when you begin the
chase, for they appear generally thirty or forty in a flock, and,
like true sheep, always keep together when they fly.
In pursuit of this odd sort of game it was our hap to meet with
about forty Tartars: whether they were hunting mutton, as we were,
or whether they looked for another kind of prey, we know not; but
as soon as they saw us, one of them blew a hideous blast on a kind
of horn. This was to call their friends about them, and in less
than ten minutes a troop of forty or fifty more appeared, at about
a mile distance; but our work was over first, as it happened.
One of the Scots merchants of Moscow happened to be amongst us; and
as soon as he heard the horn, he told us that we had nothing to do
but to charge them without loss of time; and drawing us up in a
line, he asked if we were resolved. We told him we were ready to
follow him; so he rode directly towards them. They stood gazing at
us like a mere crowd, drawn up in no sort of order at all; but as
soon as they saw us advance, they let fly their arrows, which
missed us, very happily. Not that they mistook their aim, but
their distance; for their arrows all fell a little short of us, but
with so true an aim, that had we been about twenty yards nearer we
must have had several men wounded, if not killed.
Immediately we halted, and though it was at a great distance, we
fired, and sent them leaden bullets for wooden arrows, following
our shot full gallop, to fall in among them sword in hand--for so
our bold Scot that led us directed. He was, indeed, but a
merchant, but he behaved with such vigour and bravery on this
occasion, and yet with such cool courage too, that I never saw any
man in action fitter for command. As soon as we came up to them we
fired our pistols in their faces and then drew; but they fled in
the greatest confusion imaginable. The only stand any of them made
was on our right, where three of them stood, and, by signs, called
the rest to come back to them, having a kind of scimitar in their
hands, and their bows hanging to their backs. Our brave commander,
without asking anybody to follow him, gallops up close to them, and
with his fusee knocks one of them off his horse, killed the second
with his pistol, and the third ran away. Thus ended our fight; but
we had this misfortune attending it, that all our mutton we had in
chase got away. We had not a man killed or hurt; as for the
Tartars, there were about five of them killed--how many were
wounded we knew not; but this we knew, that the other party were so
frightened with the noise of our guns that they fled, and never
made any attempt upon us.
We were all this while in the Chinese dominions, and therefore the
Tartars were not so bold as afterwards; but in about five days we
entered a vast wild desert, which held us three days' and nights'
march; and we were obliged to carry our water with us in great
leathern bottles, and to encamp all night, just as I have heard
they do in the desert of Arabia. I asked our guides whose dominion
this was in, and they told me this was a kind of border that might
be called no man's land, being a part of Great Karakathy, or Grand
Tartary: that, however, it was all reckoned as belonging to China,
but that there was no care taken here to preserve it from the
inroads of thieves, and therefore it was reckoned the worst desert
in the whole march, though we were to go over some much larger.
In passing this frightful wilderness we saw, two or three times,
little parties of the Tartars, but they seemed to be upon their own
affairs, and to have no design upon us; and so, like the man who
met the devil, if they had nothing to say to us, we had nothing to
say to them: we let them go. Once, however, a party of them came
so near as to stand and gaze at us. Whether it was to consider if
they should attack us or not, we knew not; but when we had passed
at some distance by them, we made a rear-guard of forty men, and
stood ready for them, letting the caravan pass half a mile or
thereabouts before us. After a while they marched off, but they
saluted us with five arrows at their parting, which wounded a horse
so that it disabled him, and we left him the next day, poor
creature, in great need of a good farrier. We saw no more arrows
or Tartars that time.
We travelled near a month after this, the ways not being so good as
at first, though still in the dominions of the Emperor of China,
but lay for the most part in the villages, some of which were
fortified, because of the incursions of the Tartars. When we were
come to one of these towns (about two days and a half's journey
before we came to the city of Naum), I wanted to buy a camel, of
which there are plenty to be sold all the way upon that road, and
horses also, such as they are, because, so many caravans coming
that way, they are often wanted. The person that I spoke to to get
me a camel would have gone and fetched one for me; but I, like a
fool, must be officious, and go myself along with him; the place
was about two miles out of the village, where it seems they kept
the camels and horses feeding under a guard.
I walked it on foot, with my old pilot and a Chinese, being very
desirous of a little variety. When we came to the place it was a
low, marshy ground, walled round with stones, piled up dry, without
mortar or earth among them, like a park, with a little guard of
Chinese soldiers at the door. Having bought a camel, and agreed
for the price, I came away, and the Chinese that went with me led
the camel, when on a sudden came up five Tartars on horseback. Two
of them seized the fellow and took the camel from him, while the
other three stepped up to me and my old pilot, seeing us, as it
were, unarmed, for I had no weapon about me but my sword, which
could but ill defend me against three horsemen. The first that
came up stopped short upon my drawing my sword, for they are arrant
cowards; but a second, coming upon my left, gave me a blow on the
head, which I never felt till afterwards, and wondered, when I came
to myself, what was the matter, and where I was, for he laid me
flat on the ground; but my never-failing old pilot, the Portuguese,
had a pistol in his pocket, which I knew nothing of, nor the
Tartars either: if they had, I suppose they would not have
attacked us, for cowards are always boldest when there is no
danger. The old man seeing me down, with a bold heart stepped up
to the fellow that had struck me, and laying hold of his arm with
one hand, and pulling him down by main force a little towards him,
with the other shot him into the head, and laid him dead upon the
spot. He then immediately stepped up to him who had stopped us, as
I said, and before he could come forward again, made a blow at him
with a scimitar, which he always wore, but missing the man, struck
his horse in the side of his head, cut one of the ears off by the
root, and a great slice down by the side of his face. The poor
beast, enraged with the wound, was no more to be governed by his
rider, though the fellow sat well enough too, but away he flew, and
carried him quite out of the pilot's reach; and at some distance,
rising upon his hind legs, threw down the Tartar, and fell upon
him.
In this interval the poor Chinese came in who had lost the camel,
but he had no weapon; however, seeing the Tartar down, and his
horse fallen upon him, away he runs to him, and seizing upon an
ugly weapon he had by his side, something like a pole-axe, he
wrenched it from him, and made shift to knock his Tartarian brains
out with it. But my old man had the third Tartar to deal with
still; and seeing he did not fly, as he expected, nor come on to
fight him, as he apprehended, but stood stock still, the old man
stood still too, and fell to work with his tackle to charge his
pistol again: but as soon as the Tartar saw the pistol away he
scoured, and left my pilot, my champion I called him afterwards, a
complete victory.
By this time I was a little recovered. I thought, when I first
began to wake, that I had been in a sweet sleep; but, as I said
above, I wondered where I was, how I came upon the ground, and what
was the matter. A few moments after, as sense returned, I felt
pain, though I did not know where; so I clapped my hand to my head,
and took it away bloody; then I felt my head ache: and in a moment
memory returned, and everything was present to me again. I jumped
upon my feet instantly, and got hold of my sword, but no enemies
were in view: I found a Tartar lying dead, and his horse standing
very quietly by him; and, looking further, I saw my deliverer, who
had been to see what the Chinese had done, coming back with his
hanger in his hand. The old man, seeing me on my feet, came
running to me, and joyfully embraced me, being afraid before that I
had been killed. Seeing me bloody, he would see how I was hurt;
but it was not much, only what we call a broken head; neither did I
afterwards find any great inconvenience from the blow, for it was
well again in two or three days.
We made no great gain, however, by this victory, for we lost a
camel and gained a horse. I paid for the lost camel, and sent for
another; but I did not go to fetch it myself: I had had enough of
that.
The city of Naum, which we were approaching, is a frontier of the
Chinese empire, and is fortified in their fashion. We wanted, as I
have said, above two days' journey of this city when messengers
were sent express to every part of the road to tell all travellers
and caravans to halt till they had a guard sent for them; for that
an unusual body of Tartars, making ten thousand in all, had
appeared in the way, about thirty miles beyond the city.
This was very bad news to travellers: however, it was carefully
done of the governor, and we were very glad to hear we should have
a guard. Accordingly, two days after, we had two hundred soldiers
sent us from a garrison of the Chinese on our left, and three
hundred more from the city of Naum, and with these we advanced
boldly. The three hundred soldiers from Naum marched in our front,
the two hundred in our rear, and our men on each side of our
camels, with our baggage and the whole caravan in the centre; in
this order, and well prepared for battle, we thought ourselves a
match for the whole ten thousand Mogul Tartars, if they had
appeared; but the next day, when they did appear, it was quite
another thing. _
Read next: CHAPTER XV - DESCRIPTION OF AN IDOL, WHICH THEY DESTROY
Read previous: CHAPTER XIII - ARRIVAL IN CHINA
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