MISSIONARY YARNS—CHEAP LIVING—ON THE YELLOW RIVER AGAIN—CASH.

The room we occupied in our inn, which was the only one available, could not have been more than twelve feet by eight feet, and half this space was occupied by the indispensable k'ang. Not having, as yet, acquired the Chinese art of squatting cross-legged on the k'ang, and eating off a little stool about eight inches high, we were obliged to squash ourselves into the remaining space, which just enabled Esau to bring our dinner to the door and hand it in to one of us—there was no room for him inside till one of us went out. Nevertheless we managed to enjoy ourselves immensely, Lumberg forming a pleasant addition to our party. He and Rijnhart managed to keep us very much amused with stories of the mistakes they and others had made in talking Chinese, soon after landing in the country—mistakes that are rendered even more common by the numerous differences of dialect met with in the different districts.

On one occasion Rijnhart, when preaching in the streets, was exhorting his audience "to taste our religion, and see if it is good," saying, "If you see a pear, and want to know whether it is good or not, you bite it, and taste it, and then, if you find it good, you eat it." He had been going on in this strain for a short time, when he was suddenly interrupted by a bystander, who said, "But, teacher, you people don't eat dogs, do you?" Rijnhart having, unfortunately, used the Chinese for dog instead of that for pear.

There is another story of a famous missionary, who, owing to differences in dialect in a district he had not previously visited, addressed the devil, instead of the Lord, at a public prayer meeting. Similar mistakes are very common, and are bound to be so in a language where the slightest inflection of the voice gives a totally different meaning to the words.

It was quite late that night before we went to bed, but as we had nothing to do the next day, it was a good opportunity for sitting up, talking and hearing about the Chinese people, from men who knew as much about them as our two missionary friends did. We had learnt from our own short experience that living in China was not by any means expensive, but it surprised us not a little to hear that Lumberg and his servant managed on one hundred cash a day (rather under twopence each). I do not suppose there is another country in the world where this could be done.

Next morning we went early into the city to see the market—a very busy scene, as people come in every morning from the country, bringing meat and vegetables, and the streets are crowded; quite different from the previous evening, when they had presented an almost deserted appearance, until the people got suddenly suspicious about Shahzad Mir. Besides this daily market, Chong Wei has another peculiarity. Like every town of importance, it is surrounded by a high wall, but unlike any other place we saw, it has only three gates, for instead of a north gate, a temple has been built, which guards the town from evil spirits, who, as every one knows, always come from the north. We had to lay in stores for our boat journey down the river, and as Mr. Forbes's agent asked us to be sure to have everything ready in ample time, we thought that there was no doubt that we would soon be on our way down the Yellow River. Most of our buying was done by Lumberg's servant, a Christian convert from Ning-Shia-Fu, the cleanest and nicest Chinaman we met on our travels, who saved us an enormous amount of trouble, and got everything much cheaper than we could have done.

By night we were quite ready for departure, and had been assured that we should start by midday at the very latest. Accordingly, next morning, we were on board by 11 a.m., when we heard for the first time that there was no chance of leaving till the next morning, and that we should have to make an eight days' journey across the desert from Shih-Tsui-Tsi to Pao T'eo, as no boats could go so far down the river so late in the year. A pleasant prospect this, with hard frost every night, and no arrangements for camping! Altogether, we did not feel very amiably disposed towards the gentleman who had told us that we must be ready to start by midday. However, remonstrances were useless, and we had to make the best of it.

Next morning our inquiries were always met by the invariable answer that we were going to start at once, but the bill of lading had been incorrectly made out, and had to be rectified. Other delays cropped up, and it was just on 2 p.m. when the skipper appeared and we pushed off into the stream. However, the delay was acceptable in one way, for it enabled Lumberg to come down and see us again, with the welcome news that he had been able to arrange to get rooms in a new inn in the east suburb, and his troubles on that score were at an end.

Once under weigh, we travelled pretty fast. The stream was strong and carried us down grandly, but, after going a couple of hours, the skipper insisted on tying up for the night, saying that there was a nasty place ahead which they could not possibly pass in the dusk; a very feeble excuse, the real reason being that some of the crew lived in a village close by. We had been in hopes of travelling all night, and had certainly been led to believe that we should do so, but nothing, apparently, was further from the intentions of the skipper and his crew. There was nothing for it but to set to work to make ourselves as comfortable as we could in the boat.

These wool-boats on the Yellow River are flat-bottomed, and very clumsily, though strongly built. They are from thirty to forty feet long, and ten or twelve feet wide. The ends are decked over for about nine feet, the remainder of the boat being divided off by partitions. As a rule, they trust to the stream to carry them down, the steering being done with a long sweep, but occasionally they use two other long sweeps to row. Up stream they are obliged to tow. The decked portion in the bows was left free of cargo for our accommodation, while that in the stem was allotted to the crew and to our servants, and in it all the cooking was done. Matters were a good deal simplified by our men and the boatmen all being Mohammedans, with the exception of Esau, who had no religious objection to eating with any one, believer or unbeliever. Besides ourselves, there were three or four Chinese passengers going to different places down the river, their passage-money being the skipper's perquisite. All the remaining available space was piled up with wool, piled up as high as was safe, till the gunwale was only a few inches above the water. But for the danger of sticking on mud banks—a by no means infrequent occurrence—I fancy they would have been loaded even more deeply.

In addition to our own, there were four more boats going down stream in company with us, a circumstance we had reason to regret before very long, as on the very next day, the 6th November, just as we were making most satisfactory progress, one of these boats stuck about half-past three in the afternoon, and we had to wait till she got off. As she was still ashore at sunset, we made no more progress that day, and several valuable hours were lost. Next morning six men went to the other boat and began unloading the wool—a very tedious process—but, about 10.30 a.m., they got her off, and she came down towards us.

While waiting here, we had managed to pass the time watching a ferry plying just below the spot where we were tied up. Mongols, Chinese, camels, sheep, and bullocks, all were piled in promiscuously, and taken across from one side to the other, being washed down a very considerable distance in the transit. All of a sudden a tremendous row started between the parties, apparently as to which had the right to be taken over first. They were fairly evenly divided and equally determined. Abuse was plentiful, and a free fight seemed imminent, when, somewhat to our disappointment, we were called upon to renew our journey, thus being robbed of the one possible compensation for our hours of delay.

About 4 p.m. that day we had to pass the customs-house at the border of the Ning-Shia district, and here our skipper was detected smuggling ten bales of pears; the officials wanted to stop us all night, but a few words from Rijnhart pacified them, and on we went. Unfortunately the pears were not yet ripe, or we would have exacted heavy toll in return for our good offices. We had only managed another ten li, before we stopped for the night, at a small village on the right bank of the river, from which the skipper started off to walk twenty li to his own home. We were sick of the constant delays and stoppages, and as there were several boats tied up along the shore, we landed and tried to find the owners, in hopes of being able to buy or hire a boat for ourselves, to go as far down the river as possible.

After some time we were successful, for a young and enterprising Mohammedan agreed to take us all the way to Pao T'eo, without stopping day or night, for the sum of Ts.70 (somewhere about £13). The price was high, but we returned to the wool-boat with a happy feeling of independence, which was increased when we heard that we should not be able to start the next morning until the other boats came down from the customs-house. We had, at first, been asked Ts.120 for the boat, and told we should have to wait a day, but we insisted on starting the following morning, and having knocked down the price to nearly one half, felt that we had not done badly.

As with riding mules and carts, so with the boat, an agreement was necessary, and this the village schoolmaster drew up for us; but by this time our skipper had returned, and was furious at finding that such a grand opportunity of squeezing the foreigner had slipped through his fingers. He did his best to frighten our new friend into backing out of his bargain, but did not quite succeed, and eventually went off down stream in a towering rage. We still had one more difficulty to overcome, a somewhat serious one, and one we did not quite understand, but eventually it transpired that our new skipper was trying to buy an old boat, not wanting to take his own to Pao T'eo and perhaps get her frozen in there. The owner of the old boat saw his opportunity, and was not slow to take advantage of it, as he would not take less than Ts.30, about three times its value under ordinary circumstances.

At last everything was settled, and about 11 a.m. we started, soon passing the wool-boats, which were tied up as usual. We found our craft pretty leaky, but by laying down a flooring of boughs and straw, and keeping up constant baling, we kept her very comfortable, and after all our chief anxiety was to travel rapidly. Part of our agreement was that we were to stop at Shih-Tsui-Tsi to take in fresh supplies, but that for every unnecessary delay the boatmen were to be fined one tael.

The stream was very strong, and, as the weather was cold, we used to row with the long sweeps to keep ourselves warm during the day, and the boatmen, of whom there were four, including the owner, rowed at night to keep themselves awake. This boat was built exactly the same as the other, but as there was no cargo we had plenty of room, and stood on the partitions to row; another advantage of having no cargo was that we drew very little water, and scarcely ever touched the bottom. The country on either shore was very flat and uninteresting, while the river, sometimes about two miles in width, was a succession of mud banks and shallows.

At five o'clock on the 9th November we got to Shih-Tsui-Tsi, and presented the letter of credit we had received from Chen-Lao-Pan. The agent then kindly gave us a guide, who took us to various shops, where we bought provisions, mostly bread and vegetables, for the rest of the journey to Pao T'eo. We did not, however, succeed in getting any meat, as there was only one sheep available, and that was not worth buying.

Having made our purchases, we returned to the office, where we found our money ready for us; part of this was in silver and part in cash. The latter was of very inferior quality, but, as we were getting it out of civility, and not in the way of business, we could not well say anything. The Chinese cash seems to have been purposely invented to deceive and cheat the unwary; to begin with, every Emperor makes his own cash, but these are not issued from the mint until after his death, and many Emperors have thought fit to economize by issuing inferior coins, which, instead of being about the size of our penny, are rather smaller than a farthing and very roughly made; in fact a very fair estimate of the various Emperors' characters can be drawn from the cash they have issued.

The accompanying diagrams show the cash of all the Emperors of the reigning Ts'ing or Manchu dynasty, but only full-sized specimens have been chosen. These inferior cash may be accepted as current coin in one place, while in the next no one will look at them. Cash are always done up in strings, either of five hundred or a thousand, and look not unlike strings of sausages, each sausage being represented by a hundred cash; and here, again, they have devised a means of fraud, for in some places eighty-five cash count as a hundred, in others ninety, ninety-two, ninety-three, and so on, as the case may be, consequently whenever one arrives at a new town, one has to enquire all about its coinage.

In Tankar they had a very peculiar way of reckoning, for prices were frequently stated in "small cash," a coin that does not exist, but whose value is half that of the current or "street cash." These differences disappeared gradually as we neared Pekin, and signs of a central government became more marked, but in and just around the capital itself we came across a very much larger cash, almost as big as the old English penny, but then, when dollars and cents became the currency, we were very little troubled with these coins. Another difficulty was that, in changing silver in different towns, the rate of exchange would vary as much as three hundred cash for an ounce, and the correct rate always had to be found out in a roundabout way before we presented our silver for exchange. These are only a few of the traps into which a novice may fall when attempting to deal in Chinese coinage. Had we been in the hands of a native interpreter, instead of those of Mr. Rijnhart, we should have been splendid prey for the swindlers.

They told us at Shui-Tsui-Tsi that the price of wool was four cents a pound, but that it was not of such good quality as that which comes from Tankar. Next to the wool business the most important occupation seemed to be iron working, in which a very large portion of the population was engaged. All the way from Chong Wei we had been passing through a district which was very rich in coal, and judging from the number of smithies in Shui-Tsui-Tsi, the district must possess very considerable mineral wealth, which may some day be developed.

By this time it was quite dark, so we hurried back to the boat, and started again after a halt which had lasted just three hours, to make up for which we offered our men an extra Ts.5 if they landed us in Pao T'eo in four days, i.e., by the 9th of the Chinese, or the 13th of the English month. No time was lost in starting, and all night we floated down the mighty stream, but how we avoided the shallows will ever be a mystery to me; a sharp look-out was always kept, and every now and then a shout, followed by violent rowing, would tell us that we had just missed a bank.

Not far below Shui-Tsui-Tsi we passed a village situated in a desolate spot on the left bank, but in spite of its dreary surroundings it was full of life, numbers of boats were lying along the banks, all being filled with saltpetre; everyone was in a hurry to get off before the river should freeze, the whole scene reminding one of coolies at Port Said coaling a ship.

On we went all night and all day floating down the broad stream, the only break in the days being meal-times. The nights and early mornings were very cold, and consequently we spent no inconsiderable part of our time between the blankets, rising late and going early to bed. At twilight numbers of water birds, of all sorts and sizes, used to assemble on the mud banks, uttering weird cries until it was time for them to go to rest.

One night we narrowly escaped a collision, but no damage was done, although we managed, somehow or other, to carry off an oar belonging to the other boat, and had to put ashore to return it. As we got near to Pao T'eo we could see mountains on the north bank gradually closing in towards the river, and about the same place I discovered one of the clearest echoes I have ever heard, which was, moreover, sufficiently distant for three or four words to come back to us across the waters, quite distinct from our own shouts; shouting and an occasional turn at the sweeps was our only form of exercise at this time.

Early on the morning of the 18th November we sighted Pao T'eo, but it was not till 1 p.m. that we reached the termination of our water journey—none too soon, as sleepless nights had quite worn out the crew. Immediately on our arrival the boatmen entered into negotiations for the sale of the rickety old craft which had done us such good service, but no one seemed anxious to buy, boats being a drug in the market just before the river freezes.