CO129-445 - Public Offices - 1917 — Page 308

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would make the best of whatever accommodation there was. Mr. Shen then fell back on hia

"face"; how would he have any "face" if it became known to the governor that he had permitted the British delegate to suffer such hardships and inconveniences in the province of Kueichow! I told him that "face" need not be considered where duty, however irksome, is concerned. Finally, seeing I was not to be persuaded, he mentioned that the Governor of Kueichow had made lavish preparation for my recep- tion at Kueiyang, and was expecting me to arrive there in a few days, and that the me thither. I told him that in that governor would hold him responsible for conducting case I would myself write to the governor and explain matters, which I eventually did, when I arrived at Anshun,

Mr. Shen now presented me with a map, requesting that I would mark off my route through Kueichow, so as to enable him to warn the various local officials to make suitable preparations to receive me. I told him that I regretted being unable to do so, as I myself did not yet know my route beyond two or three days' journey. I assurred Mr. Shen that I was quite prepared to take the roads or paths and the accommodation just as 1 found them, and that he need not disturb his mind on those scores.

From Tsun-yi to Ch'ien-hsi (98 miles) the country becomes rough andl mountainous, the general elevation at Ch'ien-hsi being over 4,000 feet above sea level Hills are very rugged and steep, and the area is ge erally less cultivable than in the Tsun-yi district. As a natural result, population is scantier and more dispersed; quite a large proportion of the inhabitants in the Chien-hai district are aborigines of the Miao tribes. I found very much the same conditions with regard to crops as I had found between Sungkan and Teun-yi: beans. rape, and with several suspiciously

peas, Cropless fields

The best Kueichow opium was that from the Ch'ien-bsi district, and Sir Alexander Hosie, in his journey across Kueichow province some years ago, observed a considerable number of fields of opium poppy in flower in the Ch'ion-hsi neighbourhood. But all had been swept clean this year.

At Ch'ien-hsi, where I arrived on the 15th April, I met the priest Père Fortunat. He was able to definitely explode the Chungking story regarding poppy flowers in Kueichow, for he himself had accompanied Père Grimard to Chungking on the journey which had given rise to the Chungking statement. Père Fortunat told me that in January they had seen very many helds of young opium poppy plants, but none were in flower. Similar stern measures to those in other parts of the province with regard to suppression of opium poppy had been taken in the Chien-hsi district; but had there been no suppression the 1917 spring crop of opium poppy in the Chien-hsi district would have been a record one, according to Père Fortunat. The steps taken to eradicate the puppy crops were very thorough. After the crops had been uprooted and destroyed the fields were ploughed and ploughed and ploughed again, so that no trace should remain which the official inspection might reveal. I understand that the Chinese Government had promised the death penalty to any magistrate in whose jurisdiction the official inspection should discover a single opium poppy plant.

As a result of the destruction of the Kueichow crop, Kuanghei opium was finding its way into Kueichow, and was selling at the high price of 3 taela (ounces) of silver per Père Fortunat told me that many of the Chien-hai officials are regular opium

OZ. smokers.

Père Fortunat has been nine years in the province of Kueichow. He told me that in his experience the end of April or the beginning of May is the usual time for the flowering of opium poppy in the greater part of the province, ie., in the highland plateau; and the middle of April for the few districts which are lower and therefore warmer; such districts are in the north-west and south-west corners of the province.

The Chinese delegates evidently expected that should proceed from Ch'ien-hsi still westwards to Pi-chieh and Ta-ting; and I was informed that deputies had arrived from the Taoyin of Pi-chieh and the magistrate of Ta-ting to welcome ine, and to inform me that the Taoyin and the magistrate would ment me on the road on the following day. I had decided to change the route southwards, so I expressed my regrets to the deputies accordingly. My declaration as to route brought Mr. Shen to my quarters in a hurry. There was no proper road in the direction I proposed to go; there was an enormous lake to be crossed, and there were no boats; brigands were numerous, the Chien-hsi magistrate had himself had a serious encounter with a body of them on the previous day; and, finally, Mr. Shen himself was not feeling well, and the hardships of such a route would be too much for him. I expressed suitable regrets for all these little difficulties, but announced my intention of at least starting on the route I had prescribed,

Mr. Shen's forebodings were partly correct; there was nothing that could be reasonably called a road over most of the 30 miles which separated us from my objective-a town called Ch'a-tien. The "enormous lake" turned out to be a tributary of the river Wu; we scrambled over it with the aid of two or three small cockle-shells of boats. But it was one of the hardest days' marches of the whole trip.

Heavy rain did not improve matters much, Our last 7 miles were taken over very rough hilly country in pitch darkness and pouring rain, and I was glad to squeeze into the shelter

inferior temple at Ch'a-tien. From Chien-hsi to Anshun (107 miles) the country was very rough and billy. The interior of Kueichow is a highland of an average of 4,000 feet in altitude, with myriads of conical hills. 1,000 to 2,000 feet in height, covering the highland plateau. It is through, round, and over these hills that the roads" and the path trucks go.

of a

very

On the road between Chien-hsi and Anshun I saw many fields bearing signs of the recent removal of crops, in some fields of mixed crops, rape and barley intermingled; there were occasional signs that a third plant had originally been sown with rape and barley, but that it had recently being uprooted and removed. In the neighbourhood of Hsiung-chia-ch'ang such signs were frequent, and in one or two places in the hills I observed still smouldering fires which had been used to destroy vegetable matter, and I could not but suspect that the vegetable matter had been young poppy plants, in its vegetable existence.

At Anshun I met Dr. Fish, of the China Inlan! Mission, who is in charge of a special hospital for the aboriginal tribe which are particularly numerous in the neigh- bourhood of Anshun. r. Fish was of opinion that in the immediate vicinity of Anslin City there were no opium-poppy fields in plant, if indeed any at all had been sown, and this was borne out by my own observation. The crops round Anshun were legitimate enough, and there was an absence of the suspicious gaps in the fields which had observed further back on the road. This may have been due to the personality of the Anshun magistrate, Mr. Wang, whom I found to be a superior type of magistrate.

From Anshun I took a devious route to Nan-lung (formerly called Hsing-vi); the listance was 141 miles, and took one week I particularly wished to visit Nan-lung, in order to meet Mr. Jamieson, a Chinese inland missionary who had recently been writing letters to the Shanghai press on the subject of opium cultivation in the Nan-lung district.

1) —

For the first 70 miles from Anshun the country is high and covered with rugged hills. I was not keeping to any recognised route, and on one or two days the going was very difficult; on occasions we were obliged to find a track by keeping up or down the dry bed of a mountain torrent. There are many aboriginal tribes-Miao and Lolo- in this part of Kueichow, they live by agriculture. Their villages are invariably placed a little way off the path or track, no doubt owing to their suspicion of the Chinese, and possibly of each other. A fair amount of the hill land is under cultivation.

At Chen-ning. 20 miles from Anshun, I called on Père Roux, of the Roman Catholic Mission. Père Roux has been forty-eight years in Chen-ning, and is almost the oldest inhabitant of the town. He told me that strongly-worded proclamations for

the suppression of the opium poppy crops were posted in Chen ning and district in January of this year, and that special deputies were despatched from the capital of the province to assist the local officials in seeing that the orders in the proclamations were carried out. Crops were accordingly uprooted and destroyed, and the fields were ploughed up so as to remove every trace of poppy. One man was shot because his ploughing was deemed insuficient. After the destruction of the poppy crops, the magistrate offered a reward of dollar a plant to anyone who could discover a poppy plant in the district; he ordered every man, woman, and child to go out and search. Schools (including the Roman Catholic Mission school) were closed in order to permit the school children to go out and assist in the search. A few stray plants were found in this way, and the owner of the land on which they were found was lined in order to provide money for the promised rewards. The magistrate had shown himself almost too energetic in his measures of supression; in cases where a poppy plant was found in a field of other plants, such as rape or barley, he had the whole field destroyed. He had prohibited all opium-smoking, and had closed the opium shops. Such opium as was Bold in Chun-ning was Kuang-hsi opium, and the price was excessive-4 taels per oz.

Nearing Nan-lung the country became more rough and not so iertile; there was acarcely any cultivation on the hill slopes at all; while the red sand and earth, which is a feature of the south-west corner of China, began to appear. Crops were poor, and consisted chiefly of peas and barley. Some rape, about 4 feet high, was well

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