by Tim Symonds
Regarding your route to Kashgar, I see you are taking a quiet way to cross the English Channel to Ostend, then Brussels, Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, Rostov. Rostov to Petrovsk on the Caspian Sea and across to Baku. Krasnovodsk and Bukhara. Then Samarkand. I know this because my ‘spies’ at the Royal Geographical Society noted your marginal scribbles on their maps (marks now removed).So far so good. After Samarkand, even the Society’s maps are out of date by some decades.
I imagine it’ll seem very much like your Afghan days. A stretch of the trans-Caspian railway to Andijan is the last you’ll see of civilized transport. From then on it will become varied, increasingly horse and carriage, or pony, or for the high passes, yak. After that it’s tarantass or post-cart to Osh. If you make it over the Thian-Shan mountains alive, you arrive at Kashgar, the great Back-of-Beyond, one of the least-visited places on earth and for good reason. To the east stretches Taklimakan Shamo, a desert so hazardous that caravans of a hundred camels have been known to disappear with not a skeleton - human or pack-animal - to show they passed that way. Only the cargoes remain in the sands - iron, ceramics, cinnamon bark and lacquer. The immense mountain ranges of Tian Shan and Pamir cut the miserable town off from the north and west - and to the south lies the Karakoram, the most heavily glaciated part of the world outside the polar regions, home to the highest concentration of peaks over 25,000 feet anywhere on earth. It includes Mt. Godwin Austen (in the Balti dialect, Chhogori), the ‘Savage Mountain’. At 28,251 feet it is the largest pyramid on earth. If you carry the appropriate instruments perhaps you can check whether the accuracy of this height still stands.
A word if I may on Yuán Shì-kai who is both a General and holder of a top political post, the Viceroy of Chihli. By his strategic disposition Yuán completely controls all approaches to the Capital. The ultimate purpose of the equipped and disciplined troops is locked in his breast. Consequently we know little of his ambitious military plans. Where will the guns be deployed? Will they be pointed towards rebellious elements inside China herself? Or face the Treaty Ports, including Hong Kong?
The Commandant is a little in love with plenitude and panoply but without question he is to be taken with the utmost seriousness. We believe him to be the most powerful individual in China after the Empress Dowager herself. Foreigners can be tricked by Yuán’s affability. They retire from his yamen (headquarters) with the idea they have deeply impressed him with the object of their interest.
As the Secretary of State for War informed you, we know little of events in China outside Peking and the Treaty Ports. Our agents in the German Rhineland report a burst of activity in the Krupp armaments factories with China in mind. Large crates roll out after dark, designated for Hankow, Mukden, Hangchow and Tientsin. We believe they contain dozens of an as-yet secret 75 millimetre field-gun, and hundreds of Krupp .313 machine-guns. Throw in a few quick-firing field guns from Austria-Hungary’s Škoda Works, complete with carriages, ammunition waggons and limbers, it all adds up to a formidable force.
I have occupied your attention too long already except to add there is a powerful school of thought in England which wishes our Foreign Secretary would pay far more attention to the Chinese partridge than the French sparrow. They hold that great empires like Britain’s must continue to expand or, like stars at the end of their life, implode. In their eyes China would be no more difficult to administer than India has proven to be.’
‘Yours ever truly’ followed.
I folded Mycroft’s letter back into its envelope, turning to the package, and stripped off the covering paper. It contained a first printing of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In green ink on the fly, without comment, Mycroft had transcribed The Spider and the Fly, a poem well remembered from my childhood.
‘Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,
‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve a many curious things to shew when you are there.”
“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair
-can ne’er come down again.”
‘Take care’ was valued advice, especially coming from Mycroft Holmes, the greatest spider of them all, tucked in the silken den, The Diogenes Club. In a few weeks I would be in Cathay, a fabulous land ruled by one of the most capricious, debauched and cruel courts ever recorded in history, Orient or Occident, where flattery and charm were not pleasantries but deadly traps, the Imperial throne at the centre, a pole star about which the whole world revolved.
Chapter IV
I Ready Myself for China
The days passed quickly. My journey was to commence in under a week. After a quiet dinner at the nearby Great Western Royal Hotel I clambered up to the box-room where my tackle and clothing from Army days were stored in moth-proof trunks. ‘The East India Vade-Mecum’, my first guidebook for military service in India, lay among the memorabilia. It counselled voyagers to take ‘a washbasin, a chamber pot, a pound of tea, five pounds of sugar, soap that could be dissolved in salt water and both a horsehair and a feather pillow’ - the latter for cold weather, the former for warmer climes. As on that first adventure, I would take an assortment of emergency drugs, a few diagnostic instruments and a small leather-cased amputation kit.
I considered my wardrobe. For the rough terrain en route to northern China a trip to tailors Gieves and Hawkes would be in order. On each of my visits a now-elderly cutter reminded me that Gieves tailored the uniform Admiral Lord Nelson wore when he died aboard HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. And that when Henry Mortimer Stanley came across David Livingstone in the town of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika on 27 October 1871, the former was clad head to toe in Hawkes & Co. dress. Even Livingstone wore a Gieves Consular hat.
My formal wear too was in severe need of an update. I would order a bespoke frock coat, grey, with silk-faced lapels, and perhaps a matching grey silk cravat. My existing waterproof horse-hide shooting boots had seen better days and needed replacing.
Food would be a problem on the long route. Mycroft Holmes could send stores to way-stations ahead - a few dozen 2lb lever-top canisters of the ‘McDoddie’, preserved carrots, celery, French beans, Julienne, leeks etc. (‘cannot be distinguished from the fresh’) described favourably in The Lancet as maintaining the true flavours and, as important, the peculiar chemical conditions of the food constituents. An electric torch would be convenient but obtaining fresh charges an impossibility. Instead a couple of Italian Alpine Club lanterns and a ball of spare wick, a gallon of oil of the best quality and wax tapers would serve nearly as well. Plus a 3-draw spyglass in a leather case. For compiling notes I would take my favourite stylographic pen and a stone bottle of Draper’s dichroic ink. By contrast with writing-ink, the latter is quite unaffected by wet.
I dropped in at Salmon & Gluckstein of Oxford Street (‘Largest and Cheapest Tobacconists in the World’) to purchase a half-dozen tins of J&H Wilson No. 1 Top Mill snuff, a few Churchwarden clay pipes, and a box of Trichinopoly cigars manufactured from tobacco grown near the town of Dindigul.
***
That evening I went to my work-table and took out a top-breaker six shot revolver in .476 calibre with a bird’s head grip and two spare barrels. New rounds can be reloaded quickly. Given Mycroft’s and the Chinese General’s dire warnings I would include the bespoke shotgun inherited from my father, after taking it in the morning to Athol Purdey for servicing. A stroll back to the Army & Navy Stores for a supply of Spartan sauce and a few tins of preserved soup, followed by a meal at The Holborn would complete a pleasant day.
An imperious knocking called me to the side-door. A messenger-boy handed me a telegram and pushed a palm at me for a gratuity.
‘Mister,’ he said, pointing at the sturdy revolver in my hand
, ‘my grandfather has one just like that. Webley-Pryse, ain’t it? He spends his evenings cleaning it with a rag too.’
I opened the telegram. It was from Holmes.
‘Dear Watson,’ it read. ‘Inconvenient for you to visit right now. Shall explain at some other time.
Yrs S.H.’
P.S. Am busy designing a single-shot pistol. Prototype as below. In your judgement what calibre would be best? .25 or perhaps .22 (if .22, short or long?).
I tossed the telegram into a waste-paper basket. At least I would avoid inadvertently giving the game away. I would reply later, recommending the .25 calibre.
Another rat-tat at the same side-entrance a half-hour later presaged the delivery of a weighty parcel from Foyles, ‘the world’s first purpose-built bookshop’. It contained Major C.F. Close’s text-book of topographical and geographical surveying. In case I needed to pass myself off as an archaeologist, I ordered the account of excavations at Anau in the foothills of the Kopet Dagh. Ostentatiously tucked under an arm it could be useful for averting suspicious eyes as I passed through borders between one wild region to the next.
***
The day of departure arrived. A two-horse Hansom carriage dropped me at the boat-train platform for Southampton. The same high excitement coursed through me as thirty years earlier when I set off from exactly the same platform to catch a troop-ship for Bombay to begin my life as an Army doctor. This time a second Hansom accompanied me with the overflow of baggage. The elderly porter ran an inquiring eye over the assemblage of trunks, bags, leather valises, battered tin-box and packages crowding the platform at my feet. He took off his cap, scratched his head, peered at me and asked waggishly, ‘Away for the entire weekend, are we, Sir?’
I handed him a half-crown - a handsome gratuity –and advised him to keep it to place on a horse called The White Knight at the next Ascot Gold Cup.
Exhaust steam vented upwards into the atmosphere through the monster chimney, giving rise to the familiar chuffing sound at the start of many an adventure. The seat opposite me was vacant, empty of a Sherlock Holmes clad in his Poshteen Long Coat with its many flaps and pockets. I wondered what Holmes would make of it when eventually I was able to let him into the secret, that for once I was the principal player in the mission - and at the request of His Majesty’s Government. For the first time since my India and Afghanistan days I would not be the side-kick or, as a rude American described me - in print - ‘the great Detective’s Performing Flea’.
The platform guard waved his green flag with a flourish worthy of a colour guard. I was about to slam the carriage door when the chauffeur who had delivered the invitation from Grey and Haldane came running down the platform and thrust a package into my arms. He fell back as the train pulled away, hand still held to forehead in a salute.
The parcel, the size of about half a dozen books, contained a curious box-like apparatus. An accompanying note from Mycroft Holmes wished me well and offered an explanation. A sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence would soon be formed to investigate the potential of flying machines for reconnaissance and artillery observation. A Pole by the name of Prószyński had approached them with the ‘Aeroscope’, a new hand-held film camera he planned to patent and manufacture in Britain. An ingenious compressed-air system made it possible to film in the most difficult circumstances, from airplanes and for other military purposes.
Before considering ordering some hundreds of Aeroscopes the War Office wanted it tried out in precisely the harsh conditions I would meet on my journey to Peking. The device came with several 400-foot reels of 35mm film and a small bicycle pump to compress the air. It was, Mycroft advised me in parenthesis, the only Aeroscope at present in existence. I placed the device in my tin-box alongside my favourite camera, the Lizars 1/4 Plate Challenge Model E.
I settled back uneasily. An hour with Sir Ernest Satow, the recent British Envoy in Peking, at his quintessential English gentleman’s club, The Travellers, had left me with deep misgivings.
‘Take the Yellow River as a metaphor,’ were Satow’s cautionary words as he saw me to the street. ‘Unfathomable to every Western investigator the Chinese unquestionably are. Treacherous they may well be. One may as well seek to peer into the muddy waters eddying around the piles of the ... (he mentioned some bridge over the Yangtze River) as hope to penetrate the mystery behind the eyes of the Chinese people.’
He took my hand in a farewell shake.
‘Remember, Watson, the man who presumes to interpret the Chinese mind is doomed, his theories snares, his conclusions perilous.’
Those final words of Satow’s would stay with me for a very long time.
***
Mid-September. The start of my travel diary though so far nothing to report. The waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth, the English Channel, came and went. So too Brussels and Berlin. And Moscow. Am crossing immense stretches of the Russian plain that saw some of the last horse-mounted nomadic tribes of Europe, the Tatar of the Golden Horde. Now the hardest part lies not too far ahead.
October 4. Today is the fourteenth day sailing down the River Irtish in a shallow-draft steamer to the Russian outpost of Zaissan. The steamer leaks badly. Every morning the Captain pays obeisance to the God of the Rivers, before we start. The crew and half the passengers join in with him. The other half of the crew and passengers spend their time in the bilges removing the water and plugging new leaks. The journey is giving me time to start recording my thoughts for the lesser of my assignments, China’s first New Army Field Service Pocket Book. I plan to include concise information on every conceivable contingency faced by the serving officer - from subaltern on the furthermost Frontier to staff officer at Headquarters. I shall start with advice for moving badly-sited garrisons to more favourable ground, reminding the engineers that no natural or artificial strength of position will of itself compensate for loss of initiative when an enemy has time and liberty to manœuvre. The choice of a position and its preparation must be made with a view to economizing the power expended on defence in order to increase the power available for offence. That should be clear enough.
With the world of aviation growing apace I plan an appendix on Aeronautical terms and their meaning, e.g. ‘Aeroplane’ - a flying machine heavier than air. ‘Fuselage’ - the outrigger connecting the main planes with the tail-piece or elevator. ‘Nacelle’, the enclosed shelter for the pilot of a biplane. Etc.
At Sir Edward Grey’s personal request I have also started to keep notes on natural phenomena. When he and I parted at the Foreign Office he presented me with a manuscript copy of a work he plans to publish privately. It will be dedicated in memory of his deceased wife Dorothy under the title A Cottage Book. My first note records a remarkable fact: I find myself in a region where there is hardly any autumn colouring. The leaves die green.
October 6. Along with nearly all the passengers I have left the waterlogged steamer. Today on trek to a fort near the remote village of Mo-tao-chi I came across another curiosity of Nature, a gigantic conifer. The tree with its beautiful light-green ferny spring foliage may be completely unknown to European dendrologists. The village headman led me to the stand just as dawn broke. It reminded me of the California Redwood. I shall informally name it Dawn Redwood. I have collected a pocketful of seed to hand to the Royal Botanical Gardens on my return. If it turns out to be unknown to science perhaps the Society will name it Sequoia watsoniana.
Avery different curiosity of Nature leapt into my tent unbidden today, a big green grasshopper with a reddish head and a broad amber stripe all down its back. We had a good look at each other. It stayed a while before giving a prodigious spring back into its own world.
October 10. Have wended my way to the settlement of Semipalatinsk on the Irtysh River, the ‘Seven-Chambered City’, so named from a long-gone monastery with seven buildings. We have left Russia’s silver birch fo
rests and the Ural mountains well behind, along with Russia’s influence. For the foreseeable future, large stretches of my journey must be undertaken on foot, eastward into the eye of the rising sun, only the baggage carried by horse and mule. The pretty 10-rouble gold coins with Tsar Nicholas II on one side and the double headed eagle of the old Byzantine Empire on the other are now a rarity. My pocketful of Mexican dollars is coming in useful.
I switched to a horse-drawn tarantass to reach the frontier at Bakhty and on through Urumchio to Chinese Turkestan. In such fashion I arrived at Turfan, the northern arm of the Silk Road. The heat in summer rises to 130° Fahrenheit, yet the temperature in winter is so bitter that vehicles can only be started by lighting fires under the engine sump, a risky procedure but regarded as routine.
In their heyday, the Silk Roads were famous thoroughfares, the numerous oasis-villages producing wines, melons and grapes which, side by side with religions, ideas, technologies and languages, moved to and fro between the Imperial Court at Ch’ang-an and the Ottoman and European empires. A German archaeologist travelling with me said that by the 8th Century Hindus, Jews, Nestorians, Manichaeans, Zoroastrians lived in great cities along the routes. They traded in cosmetics, rare plants, falcons, parrots, the occasional lion, and that marvel, the ostrich, first known as ‘great sparrows’, latterly ‘camel birds’.
Now the earthquake-scarred hills are destitute of all life, the cities gone.
To the north lies the snow-capped Bogdo-Ola, the ‘Mountain of God’, higher than anything in Europe. The division between arid desert and fertile land is as definite as that between shore and ocean. The first of the many garrisons I plan to inspect is only a matter of days ahead. The old warhorse in me sniffs the air and paws the ground. My mission can soon commence.
3am. The extremes of temperature have no effect on the repulsive insect life. In addition to mosquitoes, sand flies, scorpions, fleas and lice there are two particularly unpleasant kinds of spider. One is the jumping kind with a body the size of a pullet’s egg. Its jaws produce a crunching sound. The other is smaller, black and hairy, and lives in a hole in the ground. These are to be avoided. Their bite, if not lethal, is extremely dangerous. At night, I am surrounded by huge Turfan cockroaches. Their big eyes stare down at you, their long feelers try to attack your eyes. Finding such a creature sitting on my nose on awaking is enough to make any man vomit uncontrollably.