Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 704

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Travels of M. Huc.

DEC.

offered them a place of repose. These guard-houses are decorated externally with rude paintings, representing the god of War, fabulous animals, grotesque shields, and all kinds of weapons. Towers used as fire-beacons, and a post recording roads and distances, are also at- tached to these guard-houses. The approach to Ning-hiá,

with its moss-and-lichen-clad ramparts and numerous pagodas, is de- scribed as very imposing; but the interior was poor, the streets, as usual, narrow, tortuous, and dirty.

Beyond, however, was a beautiful road, shaded by willow trees, with every here and there little shops, and this the length of a whole day's journey, where they sold to the numerous passers-by ready-made tea, boiled eggs, beans fried in oil, cakes, and an infinite variety of sweetmeats. At night they found lodgings in the "Hotel of the Five Felicities," in the large and unwalled village of Hia-ho Po.

A man- darin tried to dislodge them from their comfortable quarters, but so sure were the missionaries of their disguise, and of their intimacy with the language, that they refused to inconvenience themselves for the petty tyrant, although, at the very time, had it been known that they were Europeans, they would have been summarily put to death for traveling in the interior.

After two days' journey they arrived at Chungwei, a pros perous, commercial, and clean city on the Hwang Ho, the populous banks of which river they quitted at this point to once more cross the Great Wall, and enter into the Tartar province of Alashan, which is crossed by a range of moving sand hills. The journey across these was one of exceeding difficulty; and it was with no small pleasure that they arrived at night at an oasis in the desert-the sta- tion of Chang-lien-shwui,

or of the Everflowing Waters! The high charges at the hostelries here induced the reverend mis- sionaries to record, that at this charming village, as elsewhere, there was always something that came to assist men in detaching themselves from (or rather disgusting them with) things here below. The village of the Everflowing Waters, its beautiful verdure and dear accommo- dations, was exchanged, next day, for Káu-tan-tse, described as a village "hideous and repulsive beyond expression." Every house was an inu, but accommodation was even dearer than at Cháng-lien shwui. Even water has to be fetched from a distance of sixty lí (eigh- teen miles). But this was not all the place was said to be infested with robbers, and the inns were of two classes; those where they un- dertook to fight the robbers, and those where they did not fight. To preserve their property, the men of peace were obliged to seek refuge