Volume 1
Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846 / translated by William Hazlitt; now edited with an introduction by Professor Paul Pelliot.
- Évariste Régis Huc
- Date:
- [1928]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846 / translated by William Hazlitt; now edited with an introduction by Professor Paul Pelliot. Source: Wellcome Collection.
401/446 page 347
![tumult, their preparations for departure. We rose, but it was to no purpose that we expedited the saddling of our animals ; our fellow travellers were ready before us, promising to proceed slowly till we came up with them. The instant that our camels were ready, we departed. The night was dark ; it was impossible to discover our guides. With the aid of a small lamp we sought traces of them, but we were not successful. Our only course, therefore, was to proceed, at chance, across these marshy plains, which were altogether unknown to us. We soon found ourselves so involved in the inundated soil that we dared advance no further, and halted at a bank, and there awaited daybreak. As soon as the day dawned, we directed our fteps, by a thousand ins and outs, towards a large walled town that we perceived in the distance ; it was Ping-Lou-Hien [P’ing-lu-hsien], a town of the third class. Our arrival in this town occasioned lamentable disorder. The country is remarkable for the number and beauty of its mules ; and at this juncture there was one of these standing, fastened by a halter, before each of the houses of the long Afreet, which we were traversing from north to south. As we proceeded, all these animals, seized with fright at the sight of our camels, reared on their hind legs and dashed with violence again ft the shops ; some broke the halters which confined them, tore off at a gallop, and over¬ threw, in their flight, the stalls of the street merchants. The people gathered together, sent forth shouts, anathematized the linking Tartars, cursed the camels, and increased the disorder instead of lessening it. We were grieved to find that our presence had such unfortunate results ; but what could we do ? We could not render the mules less timid, nor prevent the camels from having such a frightful appearance. One of us, at la ft, determined to run on before the caravan](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3135953x_0001_0401.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
