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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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we had unpacked it and hauled it up on to the road again,
we found no serious damage done to either it or the mules.
The top covering of the cart was rather knocked about, but
the main part of it was still all sound ; and the mules merely
shook themselves and then stared stonily ahead, as if it were
all in the day's work and not to be wondered at. Both
Chinese carts and Chinese mules are astonishing products.
The carts are beautifully built, and made strong without being
too heavy ; and the mules are as hard as can be, and as a
rule really very docile. A Chinese carter seldom drives them
by the reins, but guides them entirely by voice and cracks
of the whip. In this way they struggle along till the cart
bumps up against some very big rock, and then they roll,
cart and all, down the hillside, or until they run into a mass
of bog and quagmire, when an additional team is harnessed
on from the cart behind. Even in this latter case the fate
of these mules is not always a happy one ; and on one
occasion when, after struggling vainly with a single team to
pull a cart through, we had harnessed on another team and
then set to work, the shaft mule managed in some way to get
clear of the shafts, and got under the wheels of the cart, and
in this position was dragged along for a hundred yards or so
before the other mules could be stopped. We thought he must
be dead—suffocated with mud if nothing else. But he got
up, shook himself, stared stolidly about with an aggrieved
expression, as if it were really rather harder luck than usual,
and then allowed himself to be put in the shafts again and
go on with the rest of the day's work. These bogs occurred
constantly in the hollows between the spurs, and we had
frequently immense difficulty in getting through them. Small
villages were only occasionally met with, and the country
was far less well populated than that we had recently come
through. The hills were covered with woods of oak and
birch, and their summits with pines. Amongst them, it was
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471
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482
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