IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Across Asia : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
RECORDS OF THE JOURNEY
influence on the Chinese. It is remarkable, however, that Chinese who have adopted Christianity, take a broader view of things, and can follow our trains of thought and understand European culture more easily. Suspicion of and aversion from everything that is European disappear and often it seems, at any rate, as though they were less given
to lying.
Besides the Roman Catholic mission there are two English missionaries here, Mr Pready with his young wife and Mr Mor (Moore?). Their congregation is very small in numbers, but the former does a great deal of good in attending cases of sickness, in which he has had two years' training in a hospital. The small English station is inside the fortress on one of its noisiest streets, but once you are inside their modest little drawing room, you feel as if you were in some corner of England with cosy basketwork chairs, polished tables, an open fireplace etc. They seem to live rather apart from the other Europeans, but this is, no doubt, due to the difference of
language.
The hospitable house of the Belgian Rob. Geerst is the centre of the European community in Lanchow. He was appointed about a year ago as a chemist in the Chinese service and lives here with his sister, Miss Geerst, and a nephew, a boy of 12, very advanced for his age, who is full of pranks and looks very amusing in his Chinese dress. Soon after my arrival I was invited to dine at the Geersts', where I met some of the European residents. There were about a dozen people present. It was a pleasant change from my monotonous existence to see a properly laid table, cham-
side. The very dilapidated clay wall of the Manchurian town is 3 t/2-4 fathoms high and provided with a crenellated parapet of brick. The E gate is open, the others being walled up. 2 deep clefts come up to the N and W walls of the fortress. The space between the river and the löss hills is well tilled, inhabited and covered with fruit-trees. The road from Ping fan via Sin-cheng follows this bank of the river.
The inner town is densely populated and intersected by many streets and lanes. It is surrounded by a mighty wall of baked bricks which reaches a height of io fathoms on the river side. The other sides are slightly lower. The wall and corner projections are inconsiderable. The gate projections are of the usual size. The E gate is protected by two walls, of which the inner wall slightly dominates the outer one. The usual large wooden pagodas over the gates; small clay buildings on the other wall projections, except towards the river. A fosse, 6-7 fathoms wide, with flowing water, runs outside the town, except on the river side. In front of the gates the fosse has been led underground and in other places it is screened by rows of closely built houses. The outer town is enclosed by a wall of beaten clay, 4 1/2-5 fathoms high and provided with a crenellated parapet of brick. Its NW part forms a separate fortress enclosed by a similar wall enveloped by the outer town. The few wall projections are insignificant. The gates have no outer protection. The W, S and both E gates are crowned by brick towers with gun embrasures in 4 storeys, 6 in each row on the sides facing the town and outward and 2 in the two others. See illustration. The S and the southern of the two gates facing E also support similar towers on their corner projections, but with gun embrasures in two storeys, 2 in a row on each of the 4 sides. The space inside the wall is densely populated and has good communications. There are suburbs of small size outside the gates, except those outside the SW and W gates, which form a connected mass which entirely encloses the SW corner and W side of the town. Quite close to the wall there is a fosse, about 3 fathoms wide and about 2 fathoms deep. It does not, however, enclose the separate NW part of the town. — Drawn by the author.
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