This unhappy period following the expedition's entry into China laid the foundation for disputes that persist more than a hundred years later. In part the disputes stem from misunderstandings. To a degree they are linked to genuine and deeply felt disagreements that emerged during and shortly after the expedition. When the mission finally ended, was Garnier to be described as the “leader” or “head” of an expedition that he had commanded for less than six months after Lagrée's death in China? His supporters said yes, and found in the various instances of disagreement between Garnier and Lagrée evidence to show that the second-in-command had made the wiser judgments and pursued the more important goals. Lagrée's supporters, most notably and tragically Louis de Carné, who argued his case at the same time as he battled unsuccessfully against a mortal disease, insisted on Garnier's subordinate role until near the very end of the expedition. In an all too familiar pattern, the arguments grew more bitter after both Lagrée and Garnier were dead. Their partisans, in championing the memories of dead men, readily forgot that whatever disputes occurred in the course of the expedition, the two protagonists tried to act towards each other, and write about each other, with both courtesy and respect.
When the expedition left Ssu-mao on October 30, its members rejoiced in the luxury of once more wearing shoes, Chinese in style but shoes nonetheless. Striking north towards P'uerh, the explorers were gratified by the evidence they initially saw of industry and commerce. Despite the threat of the Islamic rebellion they passed frequent caravans of asses, mules, and oxen bearing goods north and south, and only a little beyond Ssu-mao they found sizable villages devoted to extracting oil and salt from the ground. “With its smoke, its blackened houses, the muffled sound escaping from the extraction wells, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of civilization,” wrote Garnier describing one settlement, “and we could believe that we were in a small European industrial town.” Once beyond the salt mines, however, the countryside became desolate. The refining process used in producing salt required constant heat, and the hills and plains to the north of the region had been progressively stripped of their natural cover of pines. Added to this was the destruction caused by the Islamic rebellion. Only the shells of houses remained in what had once been prosperous villages, and previously productive fields lay fallow. The explorers were in a somber mood when they arrived at P'uerh on November 1.
Their reception from the chief official of P'uerh was courteous but distracted. He feared that the Muslim rebels would attack the town within a few days. Despite its administrative importance P'uerh was barely defended. Garnier could find only two cannon on the city walls, ancient and unreliable pieces, and the garrison was clearly inadequate to any real challenge. Given the means at his disposal, the Chinese mandarin with whom the explorers now met had made his plans with one thought in view. If the rebels should attack, he and his staff were ready to flee. Against this background he gave advice and passports to the explorers. They should travel northeast, towards Chien-shui, farther still from the upper reaches of the Mekong that still exercised an insistent fascination for Garnier. This was a bitter blow to his hopes. Lagrée had agreed to review the possibility of a further reconnaissance of the Mekong at P'uerh. The decision was negative, and their route was to take the expedition even farther from Garnier's desired goal.
After three days of rest in P'uerh, and without suffering the feared attack by the rebels, the expedition was marching once again. They had gained at least one piece of information during their brief stopover, even if it had no practical value. Kosuto, they learned, the man who had written to them at Keng Hung and who had such a reputation as a maker of gunpowder, was a missionary. More they could not discover. Although they were now free of the depressing uncertainties that had been so much a part of their slow progress through the northern Laotian and Shan states, as if to replace that difficulty another problem made its appearance. For the first time during the expedition, cold rather than heat became a concern. Not far from P'uerh the path along which they traveled took them higher into the mountains. The party's instruments had shown the town of P'uerh to be some four thousand feet above sea level. During the first day's march after leaving the town the explorers slipped and staggered over muddy paths that took them, shivering, to a height of five and a half thousand feet. The reality of their more northerly position was becoming ever more apparent as they moved through a wild landscape, only sparsely cultivated, with the narrow valleys made insignificant by bare and storm-hung mountain tops looming above. And all the while, to remind them of the rebellion that threatened imperial control of this frontier region, the Frenchmen passed files of soldiers marching towards the west.
Beyond the need to move forward and to match physical endurance to the demands of the path they traveled, there was a new question for the French explorers to consider. Had they moved into a region that was no longer part of the immense drainage and tributary system of the Mekong? The question, both then and for later commentators on the expedition, was much more than academic. Long before the expedition had turned its back on the Mekong at Keng Hung, hopes of using that river as a navigable route to China were dead. With this in mind, and despite Garnier's passion to find the Mekong's source, the possibility of discovering an alternative route to Yunnan became a vital new concern. Did the rivers and streams the group crossed as they moved northeast from P'uerh flow into the Mekong, or were they instead the upper reaches of another system that ran to the east and down to the sea in northern Vietnam, in Tonkin?
In early November 1867 none of the explorers could be certain. Nor did they have any clear information suggesting that a river system running east to Tonkin could offer opportunities for navigation and so, eventually, for French commercial advantage. Later, when both Lagrée and Garnier were dead and the apparent commercial opportunities of the Red River were revealed, a sharp controversy developed as to who should be regarded as the discoverer of the Red River's value. The leading adversaries in this public controversy were Joubert, who argued for the expedition's prior claim, and Jean Dupuis, a commercial adventurer who insisted that he deserved the honor. Discussion of Dupuis' claim must wait until later in the story. At the point when the French expedition was traveling towards the Red River, in November 1867, its members were unaware of Dupuis' existence and held hopes, but no more, for what they might find.
Writing to Governor La Grandière in Saigon before they left Ssu-mao, Lagrée had expressed his interest in the Red River and the desirability of reconnoitering its upper reaches. Lagrée's letter seems to place the honor of first considering the Red River's possibilities firmly in the explorers' hands. No one knows if Lagrée's mind had been stimulated by the knowledge that over fifty years earlier French missionaries had traveled up the Red River and into China. The facts of the missionary voyage had been printed, in a missionary journal, but there is no evidence to show that Lagrée had read the account. Nor did the missionaries discuss commercial possibilities. Certainly none of the explorers knew that another Frenchman had already surveyed the extreme lower reaches of the Red River and suggested its commercial possibilities only four years before. In late 1863 Charles Duval, a sergeant in the French army, had made a clandestine reconnaissance of the Red River and reported his findings to the Ministry of War. Perhaps because of departmental jealousies, this report was never passed to the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies, and it lay forgotten in the archives for many years. The explorers knew neither of Duval nor of his secret activities. Theirs was the first serious recognition of the Red River's potentialities for commerce and the first attempt to bring the possibility to the French public's attention.
But who deserved most credit among the members of the expedition? No firm answer seems possible. If Lagrée must receive recognition for insisting on the party's abandoning the Mekong and moving towards the headwaters of the Red River, Garnier, with characteristic enthusiasm, was, despite his continuing interest in the Mekong, the man who embraced the idea of exploring the Red
River most ardently. At the end of a long day's travel beyond P'uerh the expedition came to a swift-running river whose muddy waters flowed from the north. In his published journal Garnier insists that he was convinced this was a tributary of the Red River. Lagrée disagreed, arguing that the stream they saw eventually joined with the Mekong near Keng Hung. Unable to discuss the problem with the local population, the matter remained unresolved.
Three days' further travel brought the party to T'ung-kuan, an important settlement in the middle of a broad cultivated valley. Here the Frenchmen saw further evidence of the Chinese government's determination to prosecute the war against the Islamic rebels. Several thousand troops were assembled at T'ung-kuan, and the explorers saw them set off for the west on November 8. They reacted to the contrast between the picturesque vision that unfolded in front of them and the troops' lack of martial discipline. There seemed no order to the army's departure. The colorfully dressed soldiers chose their own routes as they left T'ung-kuan to the sound of exploding firecrackers. Banners waved above them, and each senior officer moved forward to the accompaniment of his personal musicians, men playing guitars and beating on drums of varying sizes. Garnier was sure that “one hundred determined men would have routed this entire army corps.” No doubt he had one hundred Frenchmen in mind.
On the same day that the Chinese imperial forces left T'ung-kuan, heading towards the western battlefields, the explorers continued on their own way. Again they crossed a river of some size, and again Lagrée and Garnier disagreed about its destination. “For my part,” Garnier notes, “I remained convinced that it was one of the tributaries that made up the river of Tonkin.” But this watercourse was left behind as they moved on to Mochiang, their next major resting place, which they reached on November 9.
Once more the explorers noted the contrast between the earlier months of uncertain relations with local authorities and the respectful manner in which they were received by Chinese officialdom. Even before they entered Mo-chiang a mandarin had been sent to greet them. When they took up quarters in a pagoda outside the city's walls, the Governor came to present his compliments to Lagrée. He did more; the Frenchmen received a pig, a goat, three capons, and a sack of rice from the chief official. His subordinates followed his example, and the expedition was able to guard its declining funds and eat more freely than had been possible since leaving Ssu-mao.
In the middle of this comfortable halt there was a disappointment. Soon after their arrival the explorers received a visit from a Chinese mandarin who had left Peking only a short time before. He was sufficiently accustomed to European ways to greet them with a handshake. But, despite their entreaties, he could give them no news of Europe. Why, they asked, did the French Legation in Peking not think of sending a summary of news by this man in case he should meet the explorers? This was hardly a reasonable attitude—how the French Legation was supposed to foresee where they might be in Yunnan, Garnier does not say—but tempers were growing shorter as balanced judgment became another casualty of the prolonged journey.
Throughout their week of rest in Mo-chiang the party was aware of increasingly cooler weather. As they left the town on November 16, passing by the freshly severed head of an executed bandit, they knew that colder days lay ahead. Even so they were surprised by the sudden fall in temperature during the day of their departure. In pouring rain, with the mercury little above freezing, they bivouacked in a village through the whole of the next day and night. Then, in improved weather, they struck out for Yüan-chiang. During this day the difficulties of the past seemed forgotten. The Frenchmen marveled at the energy expended by generations of farmers in their efforts to use every cultivable foot of land. Terraces succeeded terraces from the narrow plains of the valleys to the heights of the hills they passed. They were marching alongside yet another river, and this time all were convinced that it formed part of the Red River system. This was a cheering thought as their passage took them past convoy after convoy of beasts bearing goods of every description: rice, pottery, spirits, and paper. After an ascent lasting more than an hour, the Frenchmen suddenly saw before them a great vista that brought the party to a halt. Stretching away to the west were endless ranges of dull yellow mountains. At the foot of these towering peaks, and running from northwest to south-east, was the second river to hold such an important place in their minds. There far below them, sparkling in the sun, with the city of Yüan-chiang on its banks, was the Red River, the river of Tonkin.
They descended into a tropical world. After weeks spent at altitudes exceeding four thousand feet, the party dropped down to a city set at a height of little more than fifteen hundred feet. Instead of the terraced hills where men fought to wrest a meager reward from the soil, the plain about Yüan-chiang was kind to its inhabitants. The rice had been harvested for the season, but the stubble remained to add a golden tint to the scene. Palm trees and orange groves mingled with the stands of sugar cane beneath a strikingly blue sky that seemed cleansed by the rain of the previous day. Seen from the heights where the explorers stood, the city, surrounded by this apparent agricultural wealth, was both imposing and mysterious.
They were so distant that they could not see movement in the streets, and the whole city seemed sunk in siesta. Although the explorers knew full well that they were in China, the view of the city with its gray flat-roofed houses, reminded them of Arab or Turkish settlements.
Never before had the explorers experienced such a welcome as they received at Yüan-chiang. When they drew near to the gates of the city, they were met by a reception party of mandarins and an escort of two hundred soldiers and porters, some carrying banners, others bearing placards painted with giant characters proclaiming a welcome to the members of the expedition. As they entered the city cannon boomed and music played.
Later Yüan-chiang's chief mandarin matched his personal generosity to this public welcome, pressing gifts of food upon them. The only immediate concern for the Frenchmen was their inability to offer adequate gifts in return. Yüan-chiang was no place to buy friendship with baubles and shoddy trade goods, not least because European products were well known in this region of Yunnan. Just how well known was a matter for some surprise. In their audience with the chief mandarin he showed them his possessions with pride: a telescope, a watch, and a stereoscope to view hand-coloured photographs that Garnier quaintly described as being “of dubious morality.” De Carné, hardly one might think an expert in these matters, was convinced that the “scantily attired courtesans” had to be English because of their fair skin and red hair. Pompously he recorded, “There is no prudery in commerce, even in prudish England.”
In the week they spent in Yüan-chiang the explorers found much to interest them. The city had once been the center of another Tai-speaking kingdom and had been conquered by the Chinese less than two hundred years earlier. Its streets were still thronged by a diverse mixture of ethnic groups whose bright costumes, often richly decorated with silver jewelry, contrasted sharply with the somber everyday clothing of the Chinese. The weather was warm and food abundant. And at the edge of the city was the wide river that provided a new basis for hopeful speculation. Here, in front of them, it was more than two hundred and fifty yards wide, shallow and slow-moving. What it might be like as it ran farther east was the question that Garnier repeatedly turned over in his mind.
With K'un-ming still their major goal, the explorers learned that the best route to follow began a little down-stream from Yüan-chiang. On November 26 they boarded a craft that would carry them a short distance down the river. Soon after the party left the hospitable city behind, the country about them changed. In place of the plains that surrounded Yüan-chiang was a valley whose bare sides seemed to draw ever closer about the river. Their destination was a small village on the river's left bank, just above a major rapid that brought a halt to navigation. The journey of three hours took them into a very different world from their quarters during the previous week. The village was inhabited by another Tai-s
peaking group, the Pa-Y, and the presence of the Chinese Empire seemed minimal. Bandits lived in the hills about the settlement so that guards stood watch on the village walls through the night. The day the party arrived a market gardener who had sold vegetables to the Frenchmen was set upon, beaten, and robbed only a short distance from the village.
This was not a spot in which to linger. While the main party prepared to climb away from the river to travel towards Chien-shui, a city that they believed would bring them within two or three weeks' journey of K'un-ming, Garnier obtained permission from Lagrée to travel farther down the Red River. Bowing to the insistent requests of his second-in-command, Lagrée agreed that a reconnaissance was desirable. The first to arrive in Chien-shui would wait for the other. On November 27 Garnier again set off on an independent survey, accompanied as before by Tei, the Vietnamese orderly.
The river ran through a forbidding landscape, stony and almost totally bare of vegetation except for the faint glimpses of green that could be discerned on the distant heights or rare spots where stunted trees and moss clung precariously to a cliff face less steep than those surrounding it. Soon after leaving the village where the expedition had rested, the cliffs above the river rose to more than three thousand feet. Dwarfed by the landscape, Garnier found little to encourage hopes of easy commercial navigation along the river. He was traveling, it was true, in company with boats carrying merchandise but the boatmen faced problems that were only too familiar. Rapid succeeded rapid, necessitating constant unloading and reloading of the goods the boats carried. And in the period of the year when the river was in flood, Garnier learned, even this slow transportation was impossible.
River Road to China Page 15