Volume 1

Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China during the years 1844-5-6 / by M. Huc ; translated from the French by W. Hazlitt.

  • Évariste Régis Huc
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China during the years 1844-5-6 / by M. Huc ; translated from the French by W. Hazlitt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    halt, either to rearrange some cord or piece of wood that hurt and irritated the camels, or to consolidate upon their backs, as well as we could, the ill-packed baggage that threatened, ever and anon, to fall to the ground. We ad- vanced, indeed, despite all these delays, but still very slowly. After journeying about thirty-five lis,1 we quitted the culti- vated district and entered .upon the Land of Grass. There we got on much better; the camels were more at their ease in the desert, and their pace became more rapid. We ascended a high mountain, where the camels evinced a decided tendency to compensate themselves for their trouble, by browsing, ou either side, upon the tender stems of the elder tree or the green leaves of the wild rose. The shouts we were obliged to keep up, in order to urge forward the indolent beasts, alarpied infinite foxes, who issued from their holes and rushed off in all directions. On attaining the summit of the rugged hill we saw in the hollow beneath the Christian inn of Yan-Pa-Eul. We proceeded towards it, our road constantly crossed by fresh and limpid streams, which, issuing from the sides of the mountain, reunite at its foot and form a rivulet which encircles the inn. We were received by the landlord, or, as the Chinese call him, the Comptroller of the Chest. Inns of this description occur at intervals in the deserts of Tartary, along the confines of China. They consist al- most universally of a large square enclosure, formed by high poles interlaced with brushwood. In the center of this en- closure is a mud house, never more than ten feet high. With the exception of a few wretched rooms at each ex- tremity, the entire structure consists of one large apartment, serving at once for cooking, eating, and sleeping; thoroughly dirty, and full of smoke and intolerable stench. Into this pleasant place all travelers, without distinction, are ushered, the portion of space applied to their accommodation being a long, wide Kang, as it is called, a sort of furnace, occu- pying more than three-fourths of the apartment, about four feet high, and the flat, smooth surface of which is covered with a reed mat, which the richer guests cover again with a traveling carpei of felt, or with furs. In front of it, three immense coppers, set in glazed earth, serve for the prepara- tion of the traveler’s milk-broth. The apertures by which 1 The Chinese Li is about equivalent to the quarter of an English mile.
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