The valley of eyes unseen
the plains, I imagine we had accomplished a feat never before known in
the history of Yangtze Kiang. Here Philipson had the launch thoroughly
overhauled and put into store. Often during the next few weeks as we
crawled up the rapid-fretted Kia Ling River, a tributary of Yangtze,
in a native boat, we pined for that queenly little craft we had left
behind. It was impracticable to take her farther, however, for here at
Chungking, our last halting place with any pretensions to civilisation,
we were obliged to lay in most of the stores for our cross-continental
march--tents, blankets, water-proofs, cooking gear and what all; and
this left precious little room to spare even in the big junk we now
chartered.
You shall lose sight of us during this tedious and uneventful last lap
up stream. It is enough to say that we appeared to have shaken off
finally the gang which had pursued us with such dogged hatred--it may
be they continued their search up the main stream of Yangtze River--and
that by the middle of June we had come to the small obscure town of
Kiai, where we engaged ponies and grooms and now, a party ten strong,
struck out westward across "unknown" Asia.
CHAPTER VII
STORM AND PERIL AND STRESS
We began our land journey in high spirits. Whatever perils nature might
be holding up her sleeve, our human enemies were left far behind; and
it wasn't till now that I realised fully the racking strain of suspense
we had undergone since we fled for our lives out of Shanghai. Good was
it, too, as we advanced in file, to look back over our shoulders at the
sturdy bearers and the wiry hill-ponies that carried the outfit for
our expedition. But most satisfactory of all was the thought that we
were travelling with Saunders Philipson. Poyning and I had now reached
the pitch of confidence when a man believes in his leader's ultimate
success as a certainty. The Chinese servants had known Philipson longer
than we, and their trust in him seemed by that much the more implicit.
Even the native bearers, after a few days of the master who seemed
to know their wants so well and speak their language so fluently and
pick out their small shirkings with such intimate comprehension, were
beginning to fall under the magic of his radiant personality.
The third night out, we pitched camp and dined in the nearest approach
to elegance we were to know for many a long day. Lo Eng excelled
himself in the kitchen--we hadn't yet reached the period of canned
foods--and Philipson produced three bottles of red wine which he called
upon us to help him empty.
'Let us clean it up,' he cried. 'We cannot count on re-stocking the
bins for many months--which will fall upon me, at least, with grave
hardship--but it will be merely teasing ourselves to make these bottles
spin out for a day or two. Besides which, corked wine is never nice.
Come, let us pledge success to our journey in a good deep pull!'
It sticks in my mind very clear, that scene round the camp fire.
Behind us rose great hills of red rock, now deepened by the failing
light to a crimson as dark as the wine of our toast, and sweeping away
in majestic ranks on either side of the pass through which we should
work westward. The natives were squatting round their fire a little
way off, cooking their evening meal and, I'm afraid, burning slips of
joss-paper to scare off evil spirits of the hills; while the ponies,
picketed at some distance beyond the bearers, were pulling contentedly
at the scant grass of the highlands. Beside the tarpaulin that served
us for tablecloth, Poyning, with a quaint hint of dandyism in his
rough mountaineering rig, sat puffing at one of his carefully hoarded
cigarettes through a dapper little ivory and amber holder. At this time
he still possessed his eyeglass, though I fancy it subsequently went
the way of so much more gear that we scattered along that desperate
trail. Philipson, who never smoked except to sustain some native
guise, was leaning forward, the light of the fire leaping over his
clean-chiselled features; and as he laid down his aluminium wine cup
after pledging a swift and successful trek to us all, he began to speak.
'Listen to me, you fellows,' he said earnestly. 'This is going to be
the biggest adventure any man here has ever undertaken. It will also be
the most dangerous. The journey to the _obo_ alone is severe enough,
and what lies beyond that, God knows, though from what I remember of
the look of the mountains it will be far more difficult than anything
this side. But if you follow me heart and soul, I believe I can lead
you over to the valley beyond. Trust me as you would trust the eternal
truths of life, and I shall not fail you. I know I can carry it
through!'
His voice rang, his eyes gleamed, his hands clutched and unclutched,
and altogether Saunders Philipson looked like a man inspired--which,
for my part, I fully believe he was.
A moment later he was pouring out the last of the claret with a calm
judicial air. 'Do not be alarmed if I have my dramatic moods,' he said.
'I should not speak as I do unless I felt the truth of every word
I say. Now you had better turn in, for I am going to work you hard
to-morrow. Let me give you this advice at the starting out: never be
afraid of a long march. My experience of these mountains tells me that
the man who gets through is he who makes a dash for it. It is like a
bayonet charge over open country--the quicker you cross, the safer.'
We made the long stage he foretold, and several longer after that.
Hour upon hour, hour upon hour we rode up precipitous gullies and
down seemingly impossible ravines, but always drew higher in the long
run. The mere exertion of sitting our ponies was tremendous. I soon
came to realise that never before, in a life that would be reckoned
abnormally strenuous, had I really known what fatigue meant, and
Poyning was worse off than I; but weariness never seemed to show itself
on Philipson. At the first sign of flagging anywhere, he was to hand,
helping or exhorting or bullying as the case appeared to him to demand,
and getting us on the move again when you would have said flesh and
blood could endure no more. His genius for organisation was no whit
inferior to his energy, and his sense of country more astonishing than
either. Time and again, when we had come to a sheer blind alley in the
mountains and were at the end of our strength, Philipson divined a way
out, found the necessary pass himself by searching on foot, and brought
us safe over. The distances we travelled in a day were incredible. On
one occasion we must have covered forty-five miles between sunrise and
sundown, and that over some of the roughest and steepest country we had
yet struck. Before the end of this stage Poyning was in a collapse,
so weary that he could no longer keep his saddle; whereupon Philipson
dismounted and walked beside him, holding the boy up, and for the last
mile more than half carrying him in his arms. Yet I noticed it was
Saunders Philipson who did most of the work in camp that night--the
bearers themselves were dead beat--and that Philipson was first up in
the morning, field glass in hand, scouring the mountainside for the
easiest route. I couldn't help reflecting what a magnificent leader in
war this man would have made. Good troops would have followed him to
the very ends of the earth.
I soon saw, too, the wisdom of his policy of taking mountain ranges at
a run, for here we were, with the summer still before us, and the first
great barrier range behind. The country began to descend, the going was
easier and faster, and after a few days' march down a long slant we
came within view of our first big landmark. I heard the bearers raise
a shout and saw them throw out their arms, pointing. There, still far
ahead, was a curious bluey shimmer on the rough yellow face of the
earth. Philipson was scanning this through the glasses.
'What do you make of it, Mirlees?' he cried.
'It ought to be the head waters of the Yellow River,' I replied.
'Right. Or rather, the upper waters. The actual sources are about seven
days farther on. When we reach them I can promise you a breather of
three whole days.'
All fell out as he foretold. We encamped beside the Hsing Hai, or
"Starry Lakes," which, rising out of springs in the plain, form the
beginnings of that mighty flood known many hundreds of miles farther
east as China's Sorrow. Plain the country is called by courtesy only,
for it stands at a level higher than the highest peaks of Great
Britain, and can be conceived as a plain only by contrast with the
great mountain ranges to north and south. Here we rested three days.
To me, at least, the time was one of delight; it had long been my
ambition to explore the source of the most lawless river in the world;
my notebook was almost a fixture on my knee, and I reflected that if
the expedition brought nothing else, it would at any rate enable me to
offer the geographers a few hard facts in place of the mess of theory
and surmise-at-a-distance that makes up our knowledge of this region.
Poyning spent most of the three days asleep, while Philipson was busy
with Lo Eng overhauling stores and looking for fresh bearers. The men
of Kiai had only contracted to come this far, but partly by enhanced
rewards and partly by a judicious blend of threat and blandishment
Philipson prevailed on them to stay with us until relieved. The new
company, of ten men, we raised at length from a wretched hamlet on
the foothills southward of the lakes. They were _tagliks_ (hillmen)
of indeterminate race and small prepossession, and they hadn't been
with us long before they gave us ample reason to regret the sturdy
Ssuchuanese whose place they had taken.
At dawn on the fourth day we struck out westward again, at the best
pace we could make. Speed was vital, in fact, for we should soon be at
heights where the "hot" weather nights are arctic and winter allows
nothing human to live. It was Philipson's purpose to hold on this
course until we cut across the route of his former journey, then to
work by means of his maps to the _obo_ among the mountains. Before
we had travelled many days the country was rising sharply again, its
aspect changing from hour to hour. The scattered tamarisks of the
plateau were left far behind, now nothing grew to soften the staring
nakedness of red sandstone and green slate but here and there a patch
of wiry, bleached grass, out of which the ponies could get but a meagre
supplement to the limited fodder we carried. Now and again we sighted
the beautiful yellow-brown wild ass, sometimes the fleeting form of
some type of antelope, while at night we were glad of our camp fire not
only for its warmth, but also for the protection it gave us against
the wolves we heard howling hungrily around us. Gradually, however, as
we drew higher and higher, even these signs of life dropped out of the
vast desolation, and we saw nothing but an occasional herd of yak, the
wild bull of Tibet.
This creature is one of the riddles of the animal kingdom. While of a
size and strength and savagery that would enable him to hold his own in
a lion country, he yet elects for some unfathomed reason to herd far
up the steeps of these Tibetan mountain ranges, where no other animal
barring polar bears and arctic foxes could live to dispute with him the
stunted pasture I have already mentioned. He is coated with long wool
which sweeps the ground on either side of his magnificent trunk, and
lives through the coldest winter at an altitude where even the summer
nights bring with them a temperature well below zero Fahrenheit. I have
dwelt on the queer habits of the yak because it was in our encounter