The Lo-Fou Mountains: An Excursion (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from The Lo-Fou Mountains: An Excursion

Here we had to turn our backs on the River, and trust ourselves to Chinese roads and our baggage to porters. We had hoped to be off at daylight the next morning; but nothing could be more dismal than our outlook when at last the light broke. The mountains were hidden in mist; all that we could see from our boat was the squalid straggling suburb; there was no sign Of the coolies who were to carry our baggage a long day's journey; and at 6 am. It was raining and' appeared likely to rain all day.

As twenty miles of unknown road stret ched between us and our proposed sleeping place, we did not spare our native staff either remonstrances or threats; and after we hadlanded some of them in the rain, which seemed to raise them to a just sense of the occasion, the porters came straggling up one by one. Having got through as well as we could the inevitable shouting, bullying, objections to the weight and to the division of the loads, &c., incidental to getting coolies to start on a land journey in China, at about a.m. We marched Off, skirting the right or North bank of the river, up stream. In less than a mile we turned our backs on the river and went North straight for the mountains.

Before further describing the journey it may be useful to future tourists in these parts to give some account of our equipage. For this stage from Shek-lung to the foot of the mountains two of us took sedan-chairs, which were used occasionally the other three walked the whole way. Our baggage, including camp beds, cooking vessels, &c., was carried by ten coolies, being packed as far as possible into the regular baskets, one of which makes one side of a coolie's load. We paid the chair and baggage coolies one dollar each for this day. Afterwards we engaged coolies from stage to stage paying them about 50 cents a day each.

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