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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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stiffness of cantonment regularity, and is really thrown with
the natives, so that he can see them and they him, the coldness
thaws, and the natives see that in reality there is much warmth
of heart inside the cold exterior. Offices and regulations are
evils which apparently are necessary for effective administration
of our civilized type, but if we shut ourselves up too closely
behind these barriers, and lose touch with the people, then the
Russian consul's fears as to the eventual result of our coldness
will undoubtedly be realized.
Of the Chinese, M. Petrovsky held a very poor opinion.
He looked upon them with contempt, and had hardly a good
word to say for them. Their administration was corrupt, the
army badly officered and badly armed, and the empire generally
honeycombed with secret societies. M. Petrovsky's practical
acquaintance with the Chinese Empire was, however, entirely
confined to Kashgar, and he had not been a hundred miles
into the country, even into this outlying dependency, much less
into China itself. I was surprised, too, to find that neither he
nor any of his staff spoke Chinese, though they had been many
years in Chinese Turkestan, and that they were dependent for
their interpretation upon a Mussulman. Every English consul
in China can speak Chinese, he is compelled to pass an exami-
nation in it, and even for a temporary stay in Turkestan I had
been furnished with a competent English interpreter and a
Cantonese clerk. In this important particular of acquiring a
knowledge of the language of the people with whom we had
to deal, it appeared, therefore, that we took far greater pains than
the Russians did.
This is not the only case in which the Russians show them-
selves careless in learning the language of a country. In
Turkestan it is the exception, and not the rule, for a Russian
officer to speak the language of the people, and of six Russian
officers whom I afterwards met on the Pamirs, only two could
speak Turki, though they were permanently quartered in
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