But when we reached the caravanserai, or inn, where Baber stayed and Mr. Rockhill and all the foreigners, where Prince Henry of Orleans and Mr. Pratt were shut up as it were, the place looked so forbidding we hesitated to enter, till reassured by hearing the strident tones of our Chinese butler inside. The rooms actually upstairs—after we had gone up the staircase, embedded in filth and hair—were a most agreeable surprise, almost as good as an attic in a London East-End lodging-house at first sight. Buttered tea was served at once, and before many minutes were over the lady of the inn, a very handsome Tibetan, had invited me to a little repast in her private room: tea buttered, of course—and really very good—Tibetan cheese like very fresh cream-cheese, and tsamba, a kind of barley-meal, and excellent when kneaded into a ball with buttered tea. Lamas strode in and out of the courtyard, and stared, swinging praying-wheels. All manner of men and women looked in. It was quite enough to sit at the window and look down at the kaleidoscope below, for every one came in and gave us a glance. And that was just what we wanted to do to them. But they would not sell their praying-wheels, and the Lamas would not let me look at the amulets which they carry on their breasts in square cases, sometimes crusted with turquoises. Surely never was there a people more bejewelled. The dirtiest man we saw would have a jewel or two stuck in his hair, and as likely as not a huge ring on his finger.

There were five flagstaffs hung with prayers on our inn, besides a long cord, hung with them, stretched across the roof. People were muttering "Om Mani Padmi Hum" as they passed along the street; and as the last sound at night was the Lamas' trumpets calling to prayers, so we were roused before dawn by the men in the room below us reciting continuously "Om Mani Padmi Hum" over and over again for two hours at least. One began to say it oneself: "The jewel is in the lotus,"—a pretty saying enough, which might mean anything. But, alas! we could see no more of the Tibetans at their devotions. At the first lamaserai we visited the temple doors were closed, and the Lamas signified by gestures that no key could be found to open them. They were not uncivil there, although rather peremptorily forbidding me to use my eyeglass till they had themselves examined it, to see what effect it might have on the brilliantly coloured pictures in the temple porch. They also forbade me to photograph, yet allowed me to do so in the end, and acquiesced in my going upstairs to get a better place for the camera. There I saw that the door of each Lama's room, giving on the colonnade running round the courtyard, was locked and padlocked with a padlock of such portentous size as to suggest many thoughts. Only one door downstairs had been open, where a very small Lama was repeating his lessons out of what looked like a most beautifully written and illuminated book; for, the paper in the window being torn out, we could see all over the room, which looked like a particularly dirty, dilapidated little stable. But when I asked the small boy's leave to go in, wishing to examine his book, he sprang to the doorway, and the attitude into which he threw himself, forbidding me to enter, was superb. It said "Avaunt, Satanas!" and indicated that all the lightnings of heaven would fall, if I took but one step forward. And, though amused, I could not but admire the little boy for so pluckily standing his ground. But when another little Lama, on our coolies somewhat roughly ordering him to keep clear of the camera, threw himself into an attitude of boxing, it seemed so ridiculous that, just to test him, I laughed, then clenched my fist, and made as if I would fight too; on which he laughed heartily, showing he could quite understand a joke.

Most of the buildings at Tachienlu appeared in the last stage of decay, especially the temples. One was so full of birds' droppings that we imagined they could never have been cleared away since the day it was built. Two fierce dogs were chained across the threshold; and though I found I could just squeeze myself in out of reach of either, I noticed none of our Chinese coolies cared to follow. Tibetan dogs are noted for their fierceness, and are one of the great difficulties of travel in Tibet. There were boys burning something that had a horrible smell in the great incense-burner in front, while a priest, attended by a boy, was beating a gong and chanting within. This was the only sign of worship we came across. But the passageway between the back and front temple was all hung with oblong bits of paper, on which prayers were written. One day we met two very wild-looking Tibetans, each bent under a load of three huge pieces of slate inscribed with prayers; and presently we met a string of Tibetan women, bent more than double under loads of five, six, or even as many as seven bars of brick tea, each weighing twenty pounds. The world often seems rather topsy-turvy to a traveller.

A dark door like a house door, a dark passage merely partitioned off from a shop, then an alley-way that seemed to be used as a slaughter-house, led up to Kwanyin's temple, a very conspicuous and rather coquettish building on a hill overlooking the town. When we got there, followed by a crowd of the usual tiresome little Chinese boys, and also by two most beautiful Tibetans, on pushing open the door we found numbers of neglected prayers hanging from the rafters, old broken beams lying in a heap, a staircase so rickety that no one liked to go up it, and, at the top of it, a barred door, sufficiently saying "Not at home." One of the Tibetans had such a quantity of hair, and such ringlets, that one of our coolies, with Chinese insolence, touched it to see if it was real. The Tibetan was elderly, and evidently well seasoned to the world, and only laughed at the liberty. But his companion—a beautiful youth, with a face of that feminine type that one only sees now in old books of beauty, arched eyebrows delicately pencilled, aquiline nose, features all too delicate for this workaday world—blushed vividly, and looked so unutterably pained that I longed to apologise, only we lacked a mutual language. He had himself a yet more inordinate quantity of hair, some of which must have been horse-hair, frizzed and raised so as to simulate the high pompadour style; but I think the ringlets that shadowed his translucent complexion must have been his own.

Then we went on to the great lamaserai, some distance from the town upon the Lassa road. We walked between walls of prayer-slates on either hand, with prayers streaming to the wind on all the hilltops and on every point of vantage; and having crossed the Chinese parade-ground, with a very beautiful weeping-willow and an avenue of specially fine alders of a local variety, saw a temple all golden points and golden balls outside, and attached to it a long melancholy building rather like a workhouse, but for tall, narrow baskets in all the windows ablaze with Tibetan Glory—a brilliant orange marigold. Several little boy Lamas sat on the doorstep playing with a dead rat, which they were pulling about by a string, one little crimson-clad boy screaming with delight at the dead creature's antics. We had just been warned to take up our little dog because of the fierce dogs inside, and the little Lamas now laughed and cried out at the sight of a dog being carried.

There were many coloured cylinders on each side of the entrance gate—prayer-wheels—and it was curious to notice the expression of one of these children, when, thinking I was imitating him, I turned one of the cylinders the wrong way. He shrieked, and the expression of concentrated rage in his knotted eyebrows was a revelation to me. I hastened to turn the cylinder the right way with a smile, and the little fellow was pacified, while all the children set off running—as it appeared afterwards—to announce our coming, and have their own fierce dogs shut up.

We found ourselves in a very large courtyard—a long parallelogram—handsomely, indeed gorgeously, painted. Opposite to the entrance gate were the closed doors of the temple, with no way of opening them visible, brilliantly coloured pictures on either side of them. The summits of the temple were so heavily gilded as to look like solid gold, so also were two deer about the size of collie dogs, sitting one on each side of a large golden disc, curiously worked, placed on the temple front above the door. On the top of the temple were several of those curious Tibetan ornaments of which I neither know the name nor the purpose. Two looked like very tall, narrow, golden flower-pots, handsomely ornamented; two like sticks with ropes hanging down all round them, girt transversely with white paper bands. Could they possibly be meant for state umbrellas? The cords were black, and looked as if made of hair. The front of the temple was of stone, painted red, but the top of it looked as if it consisted of billets of wood all laid close together, of a dull red-brown. There was a brilliantly painted colonnade, with outside staircase leading at intervals to an upper verandah, all round the courtyard, excepting just where stood the temple; and to its left a specially gaudy house. In front of this latter was again a collection of black hanging ropes, and on the top of this a human skull!

While I was noticing all these details, Lamas all in crimson, each with the right arm bare, continued to troop into the courtyard and into the verandah above, from which at first they looked down, making eyes and smiling the Lama's smile upon a woman. But suddenly, as a loud voice, with the tone of authority, became audible in the distance, the smiles vanished, and the Lamas stood round quite expressionless with folded arms. I had just stepped forward to examine more carefully that human skull, startled by the horror of it amidst all the gorgeous colouring around, when the blood rushed to my heart, as there came a sound, and close upon the sound two large Tibetan dogs sprang out through an inner gateway and made straight for me.

It passed through my mind at once, that it was useless to try to quell Tibetan dogs, as one so often quells Chinese dogs. I remembered that they are said never to let go, and I knew now at once that voice in authority had been ordering the dogs to be loosed. Sick with terror, I yet thrust the iron point of my alpenstock into the jaws of the foremost dog; but the fierce creature, although with such tremendous leverage against it, tore it from my grasp, and shook the long stick in its teeth as if it had been a straw. My husband sprang forward to the rescue, though still holding our own little dog in his arms. One of our coolies, a really brave, strong ex-soldier, followed him, and together the two managed somehow to beat off the dogs, and then we all ran for it. My recollection is that to the last not a Lama—and there must have been at least forty of them standing round, all draped in crimson—moved a muscle even of his countenance. We had bowed politely on entering, and asked leave; but we did not bow as we came away thus hurriedly to the sound of more and more dogs baying in the distance.

There were shrines full of little clay pyramids covered with images of Buddha; there were more and finer prayer-slates by the principal entrance, by which we came out. But whether the Lamas ever pray, God knows, I don't!

As we passed back into the town again, from the shop from which a handsome woman, beautifully bejewelled, had gone out that morning with her handmaid to do her own washing in the pure glacier stream, we heard a jolly laugh ring out from the same jovial Lama we had left there talking to my handsome friend as we passed out.

The Roman Catholic priests here say that the people believe in nothing except their Lamas, and we feel a little inclined to think, if they believe in them, it is no wonder that they believe in nothing else. Whatever any one may think of missions in China—and I am grieved as well as greatly surprised to find how little interest people generally take in them—every one must wish well to missionaries to Tibet; for the priesthood must have an extraordinarily paralysing effect, that this physically gifted people, still with princes of their own, should have sunk under Chinese control, in spite of the impregnable natural fastnesses of their mountains, and the defence established by their climate. Whilst we were there, in September, the thermometer varied from 56° to 60°, but the winds blew so keenly off the glaciers that many people were wearing heavy furs, and the price of them had already gone up.

Buying, indeed, we found most exhausting work at Tachienlu. At home, when one feels like buying, one goes to the shops; but the people who have anything to sell drop in at Tachienlu from early morning till late, late at night, merry rosy little maidens with a keen eye to business, or wonderfully withered old crones. They ask any price at first; then just as they are going away say quietly, "What would you like to give?" after which they stand out by the hour for an additional half-rupee for themselves, to give which a rupee has to be carefully cut in two. An aged chieftain, with a most beautiful prayer-wheel and rosary, both of which, he says, are heirlooms and cannot be sold, brings a beautifully embroidered red leather saddle-cloth for sale; while a Tibetan from the interior brings first a Lama's bell, then cymbals, then woollen clothes of soft, rich colours, and little serving-maids appear with cast-off clothes, expecting us to buy them all. It is interesting to notice how very fashionable is a Tibetan lady's dress—a sleeveless gown, that opens down the front like a tea-gown, a skirt with box pleats so tiny and so near together as to be almost on the top of one another, carefully fastened down so as to lie quite flat, and lined at the bottom with a broad false hem of coarse linen, so as to avoid unnecessary weight. Yet even as it is, the weight of this silk skirt is prodigious. Over this is worn a jacket, and over this an apron girt round rather below the waist with a variety of girdles. But it is hard to say what a Tibetan girl really does wear, for the seventeen-year-old daughter of the inn, finding herself rather coming to pieces, began rectifying her toilette in my presence, and I lost count of the garment below garment that appeared in the process, all girdled rather below the waist. The finish of the toilette, even in ordinary life, seems to be an unlimited supply of jewellery and dirt, the finger-nails, besides being deeply grimed, being also tinged with red. The men wear turquoises in their hair, and often one gigantic earring, besides rosaries and big amulet-cases. And the general effect is so brilliant one rather loses sight of the dirt. But indeed, after travelling through China, it would be difficult to be much struck by dirt anywhere.

It is very trying that they have such a very quick perception of a camera. I have spent hours with a detective half hidden behind a pile of woollens at our window, and tried every expedient. But they are said to think the photographer gets their soul from them, and then has two to enjoy, whilst they themselves are left soulless. At last, however, after a great deal of coaxing, six Tibetan women stood up in a row, encouraged to do so by the elder daughter of the inn, who is married—though probably after the Tibetan fashion—to a rich Yunnan merchant, who occupied one wing of the courtyard, filling it with beautiful wild men, but himself absorbed in his opium-pipe. I was afraid to place them, or do anything beyond asking the aged chieftain to leave off turning his prayer-wheel for the one second while I took them, although I longed to arrange them a little, and was disappointed that the daughter of the inn had not put on any of the grand clothes and jewellery she had exhibited to me.

The last day or two the yaks were coming into town in droves to fetch the brick tea away. All those we saw were black, although the yaks' tails for sale were white. They were rather like Highland cattle for size, and seemed very quiet, although looking so fierce, with long bushy manes and tails, and long shaggy hair down their front legs. The last day we were at Tachienlu we got a perfectly clear view of the snowy mountains and glacier to the south, as we stood outside the north gate beyond the magnificent alders there. All that day we rode down the narrow granite defile that leads up from the Tung, and then we heard it really would be possible to cross the river and see the Tibetan villages on its left bank, if we could walk for two miles higher up to where there was a boat.

My husband was suffering from neuralgia, but he very heroically consented to my going without him, a proceeding which our Chinese servant so highly condemned, that he became almost violent before I started early next day with all four of the yamen runners, sent by the Chinese Government to protect us, and one of our soldier coolies to protect me from the yamen runners. As the Tung would not be passable again till we reached the city of the great chain bridge, I had thus a long day to look forward to through unknown country; and knowing how the Tibetans feel about photography, there was a certain amount of anxiety about the proceeding. But what a disappointment awaited me! We walked the longest two miles ever human being walked, till we came to the place where the boat was on the other side of the river. The coolie had run on ahead to hail it. But in spite of his shouting no one moved in the village opposite. We had been warned that nothing would induce the people to come across with the boat till they had breakfasted, so we sat down and waited.

We saw a man and boy come out to till the ground. The boy lay on his back, and looked at us and sang to himself. All four yamen runners shouted, and waved strings of cash. A shepherd came out with a herd of goats, another with cows and goats. We judged by the smoke that breakfasts were preparing. We even saw one man come out upon his flat roof with what we decided to be an after-breakfast pipe. We thought he must come now. Yes! Surely there was some one coming to the boat! No, it was a man with a basket on his back, evidently wanting to cross to our side. He sat down and waited. Presently another man came out and sat down beside him. They became quite happy, those two—setting to at once in what probably is a never-ending occupation for them, hunting 'mid their rags for vermin! Two other moving bundles of rags came slowly down and joined them—one apparently a man, the other looking rather like a woman. They also sat and hunted! At last the boy moved; he went to the village, we thought, to call some one. Our hopes rose. All my men shouted together. A man came to the water's edge! Another! They looked at us. They looked at the boat. They felt the boat, but they did not push it into the water; and they went away. We were in despair. We made feints of going, and then came back again. At last there was nothing for it but to go really. The beggars in their rags on the other side got uneasy then. They even shouted to us, begging us to stop; but it was of no use. Hours afterwards, as we coasted a granite headland, we saw that boat still high and dry. I would so gladly have risked my life in it.

But now, besides retracing our long two miles—now under a burning sun—we had twenty-two miles to get over in order to join the rest of our party and get shelter for the night. It was a comfort to find some more coolies with lanterns sent to meet us before we had to cross the chain bridge, for there are often planks missing in it and others with great holes in them. We went across in a phalanx. I held on to the coolie on my left, he reached an arm out to secure the man with the light, and the coolie on my other side supported my elbow. It seemed we got on best when we all went in step together, although I should not have thought so. On arriving, we found that, when our carrying coolies had crossed, some yamen runners had attacked them, and in the scuffle that ensued the fur coat of the coolie, who had gone with me, had been stolen out of a basket. So my husband was just starting for the yamen to tell the tale. "I know all about it," said the magistrate, "and it is quite true they were yamen runners, who acted very wrongly. You want them punished? Behold!" And the curtain behind him was drawn back, and there were two men with their heads in cangues. But the coolie from whom the coat had been stolen stood up before the magistrate, and stoutly maintained those were not the men. "How could you know in the confusion?" asked the magistrate. "Can you identify the men? If so, and these are not the right ones, I will punish the others also."

So there we were, but not the fur coat! What a comfort it was, though, to rest after that long, hot day! And how luxurious to be carried next day in a sedan-chair along the beautiful banks of the swift-flowing Tung! Then six days' travelling, against time now, along the great brick-tea road, through scenes of varying beauty, among gigantic ferns and waxen begonias nestling into the walls, past long ranges of black-and-white farm-buildings, shadowed by large, beautiful shade-trees; a day and a half on a bamboo raft down the exceedingly pretty but turbulent Ya, with the waves washing up to our knees at all the bad rapids; after which five days down the conjoined rivers Ya, Tung, and Yangtse; and then home in Chungking again, after the most adventurous and by far the most varied and interesting summer outing that it has yet fallen to my lot to make.

CHAPTER XXII.
ARTS AND INDUSTRIES.

Even if I had the knowledge, it would be useless to attempt to write exhaustively of Chinese porcelain in one chapter; but a few shreds of information about it may be new to the general reader. Julien's theory that it was first made between the years 185 B.C. and A.D. 87 is set aside by Dr. Hirth, the greatest living authority upon ancient Chinese porcelain. The latter believes it was first made during the T`ang Dynasty, which lasted to A.D. 907; but there are no specimens of porcelain extant before the Sung Dynasty, which ended in 1259, the majority even then being of the class known as "celadons," which survived owing to their thickness and strength. The prevailing colour of these celadons is green, the colour of jade; and yellow is mentioned as one of the ingredients used for producing this colour. They were mostly made in the south-west of the province of Chekiang, taken by river to the Amoy waters, and thence distributed by Arab traders to Japan, Borneo, Sumatra, the west of Asia, and the east coast of Africa, in which last, curiously enough, large numbers have been discovered. They have been freely imitated at King-teh-chen, the great porcelain factory of China, as well as in Japan; but collectors should, it seems, have no difficulty in distinguishing the genuine articles, from their extreme hardness.

The safest guide to Chinese porcelain is Hsiang-tse-ching, who was collecting and cataloguing it whilst Shakespeare was writing his early poems, and whose richly illustrated catalogue has been translated. The most exquisite Chinese porcelain seems to have perished from its fragility, and the extraordinarily large demands of the Imperial Palace had apparently in old days the same effect European demands are said to have now. When the Palace ordered a hundred thousand pairs of cups or vases—the Chinese always want pairs—naturally the Government factories were obliged to supplement the most expensive and rare colours by others less costly and more simple, whilst the highest order of artistic excellence had to give way to mechanical repetition. Modern collectors get the bulk of their specimens from the dispersion of articles furnished to meet such vast orders; and the Ming porcelain is naturally somewhat coarse in make, faulty in shape, and decorated with paintings which, though characterised by boldness of design, have usually been executed without much care.

The ancient bronzes of China only became an object of interest to Chinese collectors about eight centuries ago. From that date on great attention has been paid to the inscriptions upon ancient vases, and it is very difficult to deceive Chinese archæologists, from their thorough knowledge of their own past history. A vase dating from the Chow Dynasty, and preserved at Silver Island near Chinkiang, has attracted especial attention. A former Viceroy of Kwangtung, Yuen-yuen, writing at the beginning of this century, describes his visit to Silver Island to see this vase. He examined it critically, and described it minutely in his four-volume archæological collection. He studied its colour, shape, and dimensions, and especially the inscriptions of forty characters. He was himself a scholar of the highest attainments, and his judgment in regard to the epoch to which this valuable relic of former ages belongs has been accepted and endorsed by succeeding scholars. The vase was much coveted by the notorious Yen-sung, an unprincipled statesman, who made great efforts to add it to his private collection in Peking in the Ming Dynasty. Yuen-yuen refers to these abortive designs, because, Yen-sung being a good judge of all relics of old times, this is an additional testimony to the genuine antiquity of the vase, and it indicates the deep interest felt in it by the archæologists of the Ming Dynasty. Beside the descriptions of it in the ordinary works which give details on bells and vases generally, monographs have been published on this particular vase showing that the best-informed native scholars are at one in the regard felt for it as genuine.

Twenty years ago the Chin Shih So was published, and this work with its profuse illustrations helped to spread the knowledge both of the new-found Han Dynasty sculptures and of the earlier bronze vessels. Rich men and scholars became sensible of the great pleasure to be derived from archæological research. And this has become a real feature of modern Chinese life. Men of means and leisure visit all celebrated monuments to study them for themselves, and take back with them rubbings to preserve at home. The large demand that there is in China for rubbings of ancient inscriptions is very remarkable. The bells and vases have now, like the stone drums, after much cautious inquiry and no little collision of opinion, secured a place stronger than ever in the judgment of the well informed in the Chinese reading class.

"It was about A.D. 166 that a king of Rome sent an embassy which arrived from the borders of Annam, bringing tribute of ivory, rhinoceros-horn, and tortoise-shell. From that time began the direct intercourse with that country. The fact that no jewels were found among the articles of tribute must be accounted for by the supposition that the ambassadors retained them for themselves." In the following century, the third, Western traders resorted to Canton; so that it appears the Cantonese have been afflicted by the presence of barbarians for no less than sixteen hundred years. Possibly this explains how the Mæander pattern on old Chinese bronzes so resembles the Greek "key" pattern, and why the lions' heads at the approach to the tomb of the first Ming Emperor at Nanking have rings in their mouths, thus exactly resembling the lions' heads so often to be seen on the mahogany cellarettes of our grandfathers, possibly also why the Chinese Buddhist ritual and that of Roman Catholics are so strikingly similar.

According to Dr. Hirth, paper already existed in China in the second century. But to leave these ancient researches and come down to modern times.

It was a real pleasure to me at Kiukiang to see Chinamen hammering away at silver ornaments exactly after the method advocated in Mr. Leland's (Hans Breitmann's) excellent volume in the Art at Home Series, and just as so many amateurs are now making admirable brasswork at home—laying a thin sheet of metal on pitch, and working at the background with a hammer and sharpened nail or punch, thus making the pattern, previously traced out, start into high relief. The more roughly this work is done, the handsomer is its effect; so that it seems better suited for brass sconces for candles or doorplates than for silver hair ornaments. But it was pleasant to find these Chinamen in their little shops provided with a plentiful supply of sharpened nails, together with the familiar punches.

It is not an equal pleasure to study modern Chinese paintings. Centuries have passed since they were what we must imagine from the story of Wu Taotze, the Chinese Giotto, who flourished in the eighth century. It is related that, when he was commanded to paint a landscape upon the walls of the great Hall of Audience at the Palace, he begged that he might work alone and undisturbed. When he announced that all was ready, the Emperor and the Court, on entering, found the artist standing alone in front of a great curtain. "As the folds of drapery rolled away, a marvellous and living scene was spread out before the amazed spectators,—a vast perspective of glade and forest, hill and valley, with peaceful lakes and winding streams, stretching away to a far horizon closed in by azure mountain-peaks; and in a wild, rocky foreground, in the very front of the picture, stood a grotto, its entrance closed by a gateway. 'All this, sire, is as naught,' said the painter, 'to that which is concealed from mortal gaze within.' Then at a sign the gate opened, and he passed through, beckoning his royal master. But in a moment, before the entranced Emperor could move a step, the whole eerie prospect faded away, leaving the blank and solid wall. And Wu Taotze was never seen again."

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard——" The pictures that never were painted, the poems that never were written!—the Chinese thought it all out long ago, how those that were only imagined were the best. And yet we think them a people without sentiment or artistic sensibility—we, with our fairest scenes disfigured by coarse advertisements, every silken detail in our theatres given us by Mr. So-and-so, only the acting left out.

The glorious white falcon attributed to the Emperor Hui Tsung at the beginning of the twelfth century and the exquisite pictures of flowers and birds to be seen at the British Museum show whence the Japanese borrowed their art inspiration; but in China, its birthplace, it is wanting now, though probably in many rich official residences glorious specimens are still to be found such as I have myself been delighted by in Japan, where alone and at the British Museum I have seen Chinese masterpieces of painting. Before Giotto was born the Chinese were painting living human figures such as they cannot paint now. It is, however, true that in Chungking, the only Chinese city I know really well, there is to this day an artist who paints flowers as a connoisseur, the head of an English technical school, pronounced only one man in England could. And how does this poor artist sell his pictures? Of course, it will never be believed in England that he is an artist at all, when I tell the sad truth—he sells them by the square foot! And when you decide to buy a picture, he—measures it!

The popularly received opinion is that there is no architecture in China. Houses and temples alike are built with wooden pillars, raised off the ground upon stone bases. The roofs are placed upon the pillars, and only when the roofs are finished are the walls built up like screens. The proportions often strike me as very beautiful; and the cunningly contrived perspectives add much to their dignity. But, as in Japan, whilst moved to admiration by the approach, one often has a disappointed feeling of not arriving at anything in the end. At the same time, the conception of a Chinese house, like the design of Peking, strikes me as very lordly; the courtyards are extremely graceful and elegant, whilst the beautiful sweep of the roofs makes European roofs painfully mean by comparison. Indeed, a European house now usually gives me the same effect as a face would divested of eye-lashes. The Chinese roofs in the west of China and at Peking are, however, far more beautiful than those generally to be seen along the east coast.

To turn to Chinese industries. When tea was first discovered, all sorts of medicinal properties were attributed to it. It is to be hoped the virtue lay rather, as we are told now it does with whisky-and-water, in the hot water; for if not, what does the poor Tibetan get out of the £150,000 he is said to spend on tea at Tachienlu, the frontier city—for 65 per cent. of wild scrub leaves, scrub oak, etc., are said to be mixed up in the brick tea he receives? And the cost of the tea in the Tachienlu market is nearly doubled before the Tibetan receives it at Batang; at Lassa it has quadrupled its price. It is only for the last four centuries the Tibetans have had silver to exchange for tea; till then it was exchanged for horses, a good horse being valued at 240 lb. of tea. Even to this day the tea trade is much too limited for the four million of Tibetans; and the many thousand Tibetans who cannot afford tea use oak bark instead, astringency being the quality they desire to relieve them from headache and excessive meat-eating. The tea trade with Russia still thrives; but that with Europe has been killed by the much more carefully grown and prepared tea of Ceylon and India—though melancholy experience must ere long teach people that this tea has altogether other and more undesirable properties than the soothing, refreshing beverage of China.

It is, however, no wonder that the China tea trade has languished. Home industries are universal in China, and each peasant who farms a bit of land grows his tea, picks it and dries it, according to his own ideas. To introduce any improvement it would be therefore necessary to educate the great mass of peasant cultivators. European tea-buyers' exhortations have so far proved fruitless; and it is distressing to see the utter want of care with which the tea-plant, with its glossy green leaves and delicate white blossom, is treated, compared with the untiring labour expended upon the poisonous poppy-plant. The latter is carefully weeded, planted in regular lines, with the earth mounded round its roots, and presents an appearance of the most perfect vigorous health, with its erect stalk over five feet high, its blue-green leaves, and beautiful blossoms. Sometimes it stands out brilliant crimson against a transcendently blue sky, making the eyes ache with the gorgeous colour contrast; at others it is white, delicately fringed and pink-tipped, or pink, or scarlet, or scarlet and black, or with the purple of the purple iris, or oftenest of all—and perhaps, after all, most beautiful—white of that frail fair whiteness that makes it impossible to think of crime or vice as connected with it—impossible even to believe in the existence of so foul a weed as vice being able to exist in a world that produces so frail and pure a flower, able to stand upright in the full heat of a China noonday sun and remain unwilted. The tea-shrubs, on the other hand, are old and gnarled, planted irregularly just anywhere, and never by any chance weeded. The same want of care is shown in the drying of the young leaves, picked just as they are opening out off their young shoots. At the same time, if Scotland would take to China tea, there would not be so many cases of tea-poisoning as there now are in Glasgow; but the beverage is a mild one, that must seem tasteless to whisky-drinkers. It has the further apparent disadvantage that an equal amount of leaf will not make anything like the same strength of decoction that Indian tea will.

China silk is also in a bad way; but, indeed, all over the world now it seems difficult to get healthy silkworm eggs. To turn, however, to an especially Chinese industry, and one which still seems to me even, after seeing it, to border on the marvellous—the white or vegetable wax of China. The processes essential to its use began about six centuries ago. The tree which produces the white wax insect grows in the Chienchang valley, on the far or western side of the unconquered Lolos, a valley about five thousand feet above the level of the sea. The Kew authorities pronounce that this tree is the Ligustrum lucidum, or large-leaved privet, an evergreen with very thick dark-green glossy foliage, bearing clusters of white flowers in May and June, succeeded afterwards by fruit of a dark-purple colour. In March brown excrescences become visible, attached to the branches; and if these be opened, a crowd of minute insects, looking like flour, will be discovered. Two or three months later these develop into a brown insect with six legs. And as the Chinese have discovered that these insects would not continue to flourish on the trees, their birthplace, they make them up into paper packets of about sixteen ounces each; and porters, each carrying sixty of these packets, hurry by night along the dangerous mountain paths to Kiating, a city about two hundred miles to north and east, and place them there on severely pollarded trees of the Fraxinus chinensis. It is this flight by night that has always fascinated my imagination, even before I traversed the successive high mountain passes, descending into the valleys over-grown by ferns and lit up every here and there by waxy clusters of the beautiful begonia flower that there flourishes as a wallflower. But it would be impossible to carry the insects through the noonday heat, as it would develop them too fast. Therefore, at the season of the carriage of the insect, all the city gates along the route have to be left open at night to facilitate the passage of the army of running porters. And to think of the rough, rocky ascents and descents those poor porters have to stumble along! The packages of insects are each wrapped in a leaf of the wood-oil tree; rice straw is used to suspend the packet under the branches of the ash-tree; rough holes are drilled in the leaf with a blunt needle, so that the insects may find their way out; and they creep rapidly up to the leaves of the ash-tree, where they nestle for about thirteen days. They then descend to the branches, and the females begin to develop scales on which to deposit their eggs, and the males to excrete what looks like snow as it coats the under side of the boughs and twigs, till at the end of three months it is a quarter of an inch thick. The branches are then lopped off, and the wax removed, chiefly by hand, and placed in an iron pot of boiling water, where it rises to the surface, is skimmed off, and deposited in a rough mould. This is then the extraordinary hard white wax of commerce, used to coat the ordinary tallow candles, and give the tallow greater consistence, thus enabling the Chinese to carry tallow candles about in the paper lanterns that supply still the place of lamps, gas, and electric lighting for the greater part of China. It is used also to size paper and cotton goods, as furniture polish, and to impart a gloss to silk.

There is a tribute of white wax sent every year to Peking; and to see it going down-river in native junks, or being trans-shipped from that more romantic mode of travel into an ordinary steamer, has a certain fascination for me: but the real romance about the white wax is that hurried midnight journey across the Szechuan mountains before it has ever come into the world at all. And it rather spoils the interest than otherwise to be told such dry facts as that from Hankow every year fifteen thousand piculs of white vegetable wax are exported, Chinkiang, Tientsin, Canton, and Swatow each requiring one thousand piculs, Shanghai absorbing seven thousand, and exporting four thousand more to other places. But any one who has been benighted on a lonely hillside or on the banks of some unknown river knows the transport of delight with which a light in the distance is recognised. With what joy one gradually convinces oneself it is coming towards one, and in the end has to restrain oneself from embracing the always sympathetically joyful lantern-bearer; and so in those twinkling lights along little-trodden paths, or in scattered Chinese homesteads of many curves and courtyards, once more the romance attaching to the white wax reasserts itself.

Grass-cloth is another very interesting Chinese industry. It is produced from a nettle, and with large wooden things like butter-pats and a rough bamboo thumb-protector the women beat out the fibre on the threshing- or drying-floor in front of the farmsteads. I often wonder grass-cloth is not more common in England. Perhaps it lasts too long to pay to import. It is very cool, and like a glossy kind of linen, but far more durable. Cotton goods are made at home. They do not crease as our cottons do; they let the air through like cellular goods, and are therefore very wholesome wear in summer; and they last for ever.

Ningpo carvings, fanciful and rich, but in rather perishable wood, Canton ivory carvings, and silks generally, are too well known to need description. Only, till I went to China, I had no idea new patterns of silks came out nearly every year even in that most conservative country, and are much sought after. Fans are recorded as having been used to keep the dust from the wheels of the chariots as far back as the Chow Dynasty, 1106 B.C. Ivory fans were invented by the Chinese 991 B.C.; but it was not till the fifteenth century the folding-fan, long before invented by the Japanese, found its way into China. In the west of China it is, however, still not etiquette to carry such a fan to a party; for it looks as if you had no servant to stand behind your chair and hold it for you when you do not want it. The Chinese ivory fans are carved all over right through till the whole looks like lace, the part not taken up by the design being very delicately cut in short perpendicular lines.

But probably the art and industry carried to the greatest perfection in China is that of embroidery. English people do not appreciate what Chinese embroideries really are, because such a quantity of work is done by men working at frames, and merely for so much a day. The best has always been done by ladies, working at home, and putting all the fancy of a lifetime into a portière, or bed-hanging. One of the most fairylike pieces of embroidery I have ever seen was mosquito-curtains worked all over with clusters of wistaria for either the Emperor or Empress, and somehow or other bought, before being used, out of the Imperial Palace by a European collector. The rich yet delicate work upon the very fine silky material made these mosquito-curtains a thing to haunt the dreams of all one's after-life.

Whilst, however, the handiwork of the Chinese appears to me unsurpassed, and their colour arrangements in old days, before the introduction from Europe of aniline dyes, are much more agreeable to me than those of Japan, there seems to be nothing to satisfy the soul in Chinese artistic work, which gratifies the senses, but appeals to none of the higher part of man. I should, however, say quite the same of that of Japan, which got all its art originally from China, and has never, I think, quite arrived at the ancient dignity of Chinese art, although at the present day Japan's artistic work is certainly far more graceful and pleasing.

One day in the neighbourhood of Shanghai we walked along a path where, marvellous for China, two people could walk abreast, and, crossing a variety of creeks in a variety of ways, came upon the ruins of a camp, finally reaching two tall chimneys, a landmark in the scene. Our puzzle was what fuel they could possibly find to burn inside those tall chimneys. It turned out to be rice husks. A man sat on the ground, and with one hand worked a bellows, thus making forced draught, while with the other he threw on a tiny handful of rice husks, not enough to choke the bright flame roused by the draught. Another man weighed out crushed cotton seeds into a little basket, emptied them into a vessel on the fire till it just boiled, then emptied them again into another vessel—if you can call it such—a sort of frame of split bamboo twisted, kneaded it, all hot as it was, with his feet, and then piled it up ready to be pressed, always with a bit of basket-work flattening it on the top. We waited to see the cakes pressed. They were like cheeses, each with their twisted bamboo rings round them. When as many as could be were fitted into the trough, then by putting in wedges the bulk was reduced to rather less than half what it at first appeared, during which time a constant stream of oil was flowing through the trough. A man hammered the wedges, towards the end using a stone hammer so heavy I could only just lift it. It was rather amusing to see the politeness of these men. One of them wanted to smoke. But before doing so he offered his pipe both to my husband and to myself, quite with the air of expecting his offer to be accepted. I had an ulster, and they all admired the material of it very much, saying each in turn they were quite sure it was pi chi (long ells). There were buffaloes crushing the cotton seeds, walking round and round with basket-work blinkers over their poor eyes. Curiously enough, the heavy millstones they wheeled round, all of hardest granite as they were, yet were decorated with carvings. One had the key pattern, or a slightly different scroll; also characters, very carefully carved, to the effect that it was the fairy carriage and the dragon's wheel.

It seemed strange to come upon this touch of æstheticism in this very homely sort of factory, whose whole plant must have cost so very little, and which was in consequence, though so well adapted for its purpose, yet so simple that it might well serve as an illustration for an elementary primer in mechanics. Indeed, this factory at home, and in the fresh air, was the very ideal Ruskin writes about, and that the Village Industries Society at home has lately been formed to realise, if yet it may be, in England. It has been realised during long centuries in China, and yet the millennium has not arrived.

We went back through a long, crowded, flourishing street. At an open doorway there were young priests sitting inside, chanting. They had musical instruments and gongs. A man behind a table was very busy stamping envelopes such as Chinese officials use, very large and covered with characters. He was good enough to pause, and show us the letters these envelopes were to contain, very long and beautifully written, and most neatly and cunningly folded. There was some one very ill in the house, and these letters were addressed to heaven, describing circumstantially his sad case. They were presently to be burnt, and thus delivered. The lanterns with which this house was decorated were blue for semi-mourning. Only a few doors farther off, curiously enough, we came upon a wedding. The doors stood wide open, and we saw a long vista of courtyards and ting-tzes, all with open doors, and at the end what I fancied were a number of smartly dressed servants standing. There was a band in the first courtyard, with the quaint, pretty-looking instruments of crocodile-skin which I had before so much admired in Shanghai Chinese city. Every one seemed so obliging, I asked to look inside the wedding-chair. It was remarkably smart, really beautifully embroidered all over outside. But, to my intense disgust, the cushion on which the bride was to sit was an old common red cushion, worn at the corners, and actually dirty, and the inside of the chair had not even been swept out.

CHAPTER XXIII.
A LITTLE PEKING PUG.