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.
414/446 page 360
![but forage came from Tchong-Wei, and the transport being very difficult, they were dear to a degree that altogether disconcerted our economical arrangements. For ourselves and our animals, we were obliged to disburse 1,600 sapeks, a matter of nearly seven shillings. Only for this circumstance we should perhaps have quitted with regret the charming village of Tchang- Lieou-Chouy; but there is always something which intervenes to aid man in detaching himself from the things of this world. On quitting Tchang-Lieou-Chouy, we took the road followed by the Chinese exiles on their way to Hi. The country is somewhat less dreadful than that which we had travelled through on the preceding day, but it is Shill very dismal. Gravel had taken the place of sand, and with the exception that it produced a few tufts of grass, hard and prickly, the soil was arid and barren. We reached, in due course, Kao-Tan-Dze [Kao-tan-tzu], a village repulsive and hideous beyond all expression. It consists of a few miserable habi¬ tations, rudely conStruShed of black earth, and all of them inns. Provisions are even more scarce there than at Ever-Flowing Waters, and correspondingly dearer. Everything has to be brought from Tchong- Wei, for the distriSl produces nothing, not even water. Wells have been sunk to a very great depth, but nothing has been found except hard, rocky, moiStureless earth. The inhabitants of Kao-Tan-Dze have to fetch their water a distance of more then twelve miles, and they accordingly charge travellers a monStrous price for every drop. A single bucket co£ts sixty sapeks. Had we attempted to water our camels we should have had to lay out fifty fifties of sapeks; we were therefore forced to be content with drinking ourselves, and giving a draught to our horses. As to the camels, they had to await better days and a less inhospitable soil.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3135953x_0001_0414.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
