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Overrunning Kwangsi and Hunan, they had got possession of Hankow and the two adjacent cities, a centre of wealth which may be compared to the three cities that form our Greater New York. Everywhere they put to flight the government forces; but they did not choose to stop anywhere short of the ancient capital of the Mings.
Where the danger is unusually great a pilot is taken on board, but still it is reckoned that one junk in ten runs aground, and one in twenty is totally wrecked. To go from Hankow to Chungking takes thirty-five days, and to come down in the opposite direction with the stream only nine days. The voyage down the river is much more dangerous, and on this voyage most of the shipwrecks occur.
One evening during the tea season, just before dinner, I counted at one time fourteen nationalities in the bar of the Hankow Club. I like those friendly gatherings at the round table, when sport and other topics of our limited world are discussed, and when one generally manages to give or to receive an invitation to pot-luck, with a rubber or a gentle poker flutter to follow.
The natural highway of Central and Southern Yunnan is by Tonquin, and no artificial means can ever alter it. At present Eastern Yunnan sends her trade through the provinces of Kweichow and Hunan to the Yangtse above Hankow, or viâ the two Kuangs to Canton. Shortness of distance, combined with facility of transport, must soon tap this trade or divert it into the highways of Tonquin.
About Hankow I found farming much more primitive than that around Peking, Nankou, and Tientsin. Instead of the three and four horse plows I found in North China, the plowmen about Hankow seem to rely chiefly on a single ox. The farms, too, are much smaller. No one here speaks of buying a "farm"; he buys a "field." In Kwang-tung there is a saying that one sixth of an acre "will support one mouth."
Travelling by way trains had no terrors for me, it would give me a chance to see the country, and it was for that I had come to China, and I knew I could manage about my things; but the Chinese inn was something of a difficulty, as I was leaving interpreter and cook in Hankow. I jumped into a rickshaw and by good luck found the genial superintendent, M. Didier, at the station.
At Hankow, where a north-easterly gale against a four-knot current raises a choppy and heavy sea most dangerous for small craft, I have seen four red-boats racing from different directions to rescue the occupants of a capsized sampan.
There is not the roughing required in Hankow which is necessary in other parts of the empire, as in British East Africa and in the jungles of the Federated Malay States, for instance. Building the Empire where there is an abundance of the straw wherewith to make the bricks, is a matter of no difficulty.
At thirty-five he had directed the construction of the tramways of Cairo and of the Lower Egyptian Railways. He was now caught up in Leopold's great dream of Belgian expansion. The moment that the king obtained the concession for constructing the 1,200 mile railway from Pekin to Hankow he sent Jadot to China to take charge.
Then, without rewarding Sen for the time spent in his service, or even inviting him to partake of food and wine, the insufferable deviser of very indifferent animated contrivances again sent him out, this time into the streets of Hankow with a number of delicately inlaid boxes, remarking in a tone of voice which plainly indicated an exactly contrary desire that he would be filled with an overwhelming satisfaction if Sen could discover any excuse for returning a second time without disposing of anything.
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