IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
X24 THE HEART OF A CONTINENT. [CHAP. VI.
Chinese, Mongols, Kalmacs, Turkis, and others. Large heavily laden travelling carts would come lumbering through, and strings of camels from across the desert.
I was looking out for a shop where it was said Russian goods could be bought. When I found it, I noticed Russiân characters above, and on looking behind the counter was both surprised and delighted to see a Russian. He shook hands very heartily with me, and asked me to come inside. He spoke neither Chinese nor English, but only Russian and Mongol, and as I could speak neither of those languages, we had to communicate with each other through a Chinaman, who spoke Mongol. This Russian lived in a Chinese house, in Chinese fashion, but was dressed in European clothes. On the walls of his room I noticed a flaring picture entitled, the " Prince of Wales in India," in which everybody had a vermilion complexion, and was dressed in a most gorgeous and impossible uniform. He told me that trading at this place was not very profitable. He sold chiefly cotton goods and iron-ware, such as pails, basins, knives, etc. There had been five Russian merchants here, but two had gone to Kobolo, and two were engaged in hunting down Chinese mandarins, to try and get money which was owing to them.
The next evening I invited the Russian round to my inn to dinner. Conversation was difficult, but we managed to spend a
very pleasant evening, and drank to the health of our respective
sovereigns. I held up my glass and said, " Czar," and we drank together. Then I held it up again and said, " Skobeleff," and
so on through every Russian I had heard of. My guest, I am sorry to say, knew very few Englishmen, but he had grasped the fact that we had a queen, so at five-minute intervals he would drink to her Majesty.
Three years later, when I was at Kashgar, I heard that two Russian merchants residing at Hami had been imprisoned by the Chinese authorities, and treated in the most terrible
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