Despite another arduous 12-hour day on foot I’m having difficulty sleeping, possibly because of the high altitude.
November 9. After-thought in Yuán’s mind or not, I am taking my commission seriously. I’ve started mapping outlying garrisons and their settings at 4 inches to 1 English mile, identifying approaches as ‘fordable’, ‘wall-broken scaleable’, ‘buttress cracked’, ‘wall about 10 feet high 3 feet thick’, ‘buildings suitable for billets’& c.
Roads. Even in such a remote region as this there once existed great imperial highways, arteries of Empire paved with stone and bordered with trees. Now badly neglected, the ruins of the ancient tracks present serious impediments to travel. For difficult stretches the muleteer takes on a local horseman to act as road finder. Farmers have turned long stretches of highway into the narrowest of strips by an extended system of banks and ditches. If heavy summer rains wash away a part of the farm into the strip, the farmer digs his land out again, a process which, combined with natural drainage and incessant dust-storms, has resulted in transforming the road into a canal. At the coldest time of the year these arteries freeze, making it easier to move along, like canals in Amsterdam.
I shall put it to General Yuán the New Army could gain the affection of the people if it put these former roads into good repair, to his own advantage if military demands arise.
November 14. A two-mile tramp has brought us in view of a torrent below. On steep cliffs opposite, clinging to bare, wild, rocky moraines, perches an isolated temple. Behind and to our left is a great mountain where thunderstorms are gathering. We face a descent of 1500 feet to the river-bank. Chocolate-brown waters passes under the bridge, eddying and swirling in great whirlpools. Flooded by rain far upstream, the river roars on its way, making the mules difficult to hold. This mighty river with a course of over 2,000 miles is apparently crossed only by the one bridge, a suspension bridge with boards resting on two pairs of six chains. From a military perspective, its principal virtue lies in the ability of just a handful of men to hold up an army - and break the chains if certain defeat looms.
I have been mapping every step of the way up hill and down dale using a Service Prismatic oil-filled compass. The half-a-crown boiling-point thermometer, so useful for gauging altitude, has disappeared, possibly stolen. I have to make a good fist at estimating altitudes, partly by triangulation when unobserved, or (especially in suspicious company) by noting the boiling point of water for our tea. By this method I reckoned the height of one pass to be 15,600 feet, almost three hundred feet higher than estimated by a trigonometrical survey some fifty years earlier. Unfortunately my last bottle of methylated spirits fell from a mule and broke. I shall have to make do with candles to heat water.
I am recording the local names of rivers when I can discover them, not made easy by the fact big rivers in China, except the Yellow River, have different names as they pass through different districts. The name on a chart may be unrecognisable to the local population. Small rivers have a different name in each village they pass.
Today I took a small boat and went fishing. The waters were full of shih-hua fish. They taste fresh and delicious, difficult to describe in words.
November 17. Spent much of the day inspecting a trio of garrisons along the length of a strategic all-weather pass. At 10am I inspected the first fort. After lunch I was conducted with proper ceremonial to the site of my second inspection, the middle fort. The roll was called, the men answered their names, and I expressed my same satisfaction at the condition of the post. After a delay for tea, I was transported to the westernmost fort. Returning to my encampment I have grown the more certain the men at the three forts did not just look alike, they were the exact men from the first fort hurriedly transported to the second and onward to the third. Otherwise there must be three entirely different men with the exact same scar on their cheek as though they’d all been members of a Prussian duelling club. Padding out three forts this way enables the officers to fleece their government for supplies and money for triple the true number of men under their command.
I have started jotting notes on preparation needed for battles to come between any outside Powers and the Middle Kingdom. The first step must be to build a proper corps of stretcher and dooly bearers for the carriage of sick and wounded from the battle fields. The equivalent was singularly lacking around my position during the Battle of Maiwand. If my bearer Murray had not been a reliable - and strong - companion, the bullet from an Afghan Jezzail which struck me would have done for me from exsanguination alone.
Nationally there are about 200,000 enrolled bannermen and some further thousands in the Peking gendarmerie. Many of them have courage but there is no tradition to render them fruitful. No martial spirit. No disgrace for the coward. No honour for the valiant. Devising training for these souls is not going to be easy. Heaven help them if they come up against a modern army of 10,000 men, even the Russian infantry.
Banner garrisons were designed as internal Manchu colonies responsive only to Peking’s commands, strategically-dotted to forestall the emergence of regional armed satrapies. Matchlock guns had been distributed among the garrisons I inspected three weeks ago. Each soldier stored his ration of gunpowder in a small bamboo case strapped to his torso, on the grounds this permitted easy reach for reloading. The habit persisted even after I remonstrated on my visit. My fears were quickly justified. When to demonstrate their prowess the men threw themselves to the ground to aim, their matches set fire to the packages of gunpowder strapped to the waists and chests of the cotton-padded uniforms. Three of them burned to death before our eyes.
Another practice needs urgent attention. It has been the norm in the less-trusted non-bannerman units to keep artillery and rifles in a locked arsenal. The soldier selects his weapon anew every time its use is called for. Drills consist of one soldier after another lining up and firing a single shot. The soldiers often do not know how to load or fire the weapons issued to them on any particular day, therefore they fail to adjust to the peculiarities of individual weapon.
November 20. We have halted for the night under the shadow of a great mass of grey rock. Nearby is an unnamed village of about 100 families. The ‘dibao’ - headman - is a woman. The villagers’ principal income comes from growing vegetables and fruits, and grains, especially rice and barley, and from mercury sulphide mines. I plan to purchase a supply of pomegranates, grapes, turnips and rice.
At sun-up I asked for permission to photograph the dibao and her private chaplains, amidst their butter-lamps and cups of wine.
A Japanese archaeologist-cum-spy camped nearby presented me with a wide-brimmed hat made of bamboo plait. It looked like the top of an enormous white mushroom. The light frame inside fits around the brow, leaving a space of about one-and-a-half inches between the head and the hat for the free circulation of air. It’s proving quite the most perfect travelling hat I’ve ever owned, even better than the red-flannel Mongolian cap.
Today I had my second encounter with a local Chinese Military garrison. The instructor conducting the foot drill did a fair job manoeuvring the men from an eight-wide route-march formation to two-wide for passing back and forth through the garrison’s gates and narrow passages without losing time or cohesion.