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But wrapping myself in my mackintosh, and putting my paper umbrella at the right angle, I went to sleep with the rain dripping on me as they were indulging in final pleasantries regarding each other's ancestry. The first thing I saw at Chao-t'ong the next day was the foreign cigarette, sold at a wayside stall by a vendor of monkey nuts and marrow seeds.
At Chao-t'ong I had bought a pony in case of emergency one of those sturdy little brutes that never grow tired, cost little to keep, and are unexcelled for the amount of work they can get through every day in the week. The first I saw of it was when it was standing full on its hind legs pinning a man between the railings and a wall in a corner of the mission premises. It looked well.
For cruelty to animals China stands an easy first; love of animals does not enter into their sympathies at all. I found this not to be the case among the Miao and the I-pien, however; and the tribes across the Yangtze below Chao-t'ong, locally called the Pa-pu, are, as a matter of fact, fond of horses, and some of them capable horsemen. The journey across these mountains has no perils.
Despite the fact that this chapter was the last written, it has been thought wise to place it here. It deals with the Chao-t'ong Rebellion, of which the outside world, even when it was at its height, knew little, but which, so recently as a couple of months prior to the date of writing, threatened to spell extermination to the foreigners in North-East Yün-nan.
At the time of the great Miao revival, when thousands of Miao made a raid on the mission premises at Chao-t'ong, and implored the missionaries to come and teach them, it was found absolutely necessary that the language should be reduced to writing, and the whole of this extremely creditable work fell to the Rev.
There is a class of people around Chao-t'ong who are called Nou-su, a people who, although occupying the Chao-t'ong Plain at the time the Chinese arrived, are believed not to be the aboriginals of the district. What I actually know about this people is not much. I have heard a good deal, but it must not be understood that I publish this as absolutely the final word.
From Chao-t'ong to Yün-nan-fu, the viceregal seat, is twelve days' hard going, and all communication was done by telegraph seemingly easy enough; but one must not discount the slow Chinese methods of doing things.
Such was the Chao-t'ong Rebellion, luckily unattended by loss of life among the foreigners. At the end of 1909 probably no part of the Empire seemed more peaceful. "Kill, kill, kill!" ran the cry for miles around the countryside, and a fearful repetition of the bloody history of ten years ago was daily feared.
It had no less than four buildings, each with a paved rectangular courtyard which all the rooms overlooked. A military official, who was on his way to Chao-t'ong to deal with the rebellion, of which the reader has already learnt a good deal, was expected soon after I arrived. My room was already arranged, however, when the landlord came to me and said "Yang gwan, you must please go out!"
Two women, caught in the act of stealing children at Chao-t'ong, were taken to the yamen, hung in cages for a time as a warning to others, and then made to walk through the streets shouting, "Don't steal children as I have; don't steal children as I have." If they stopped yelling, soldiers scourged them.
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