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| 0493 |
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 |
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what remained of it proved most helpful in warding off
starvation and the immediate return to the miners' camp
for which all the Chinese were now clamouring.
At first, however, they persisted in refusing to touch
the barley, declaring that it was impossible food for humans.
The argument that I ate it myself daily as porridge made
little or no impression until Chiang-ssŭ-yeh's diplomacy
came to the rescue. He had done his best all along to
look after and cheer the refractory pony-men, and had
slowly acquired some mild influence over them. He now
explained to them gravely that I, whom they curiously
enough readily credited with a good deal of Chinese
learning—though I could not give adequate expression to
it in their colloquial dialect—had found a classical passage
declaring barley a permissible substitute for one of the six
orthodox food-stuffs. This made due impression on their
minds, permeated by time-honoured prejudices and con-
ventions; but Chiang had bravely to set an example by
eating it himself before they reconciled themselves to a
diet of roasted barley.
Altogether the natural difficulties unavoidable in such
inhospitable solitudes were considerably increased by the
helplessness of our Chinese pony-men, and what I may
politely call their deep-rooted 'aversion to taking risks.'
Now these dreaded mountains were to them full of risks,
imaginary as well as real; and instead of using such
intelligence as plentiful opium-smoking had left them to
guard against these, they tried their best to run away from
them altogether. Chiang and myself used to talk of them
as our 'senile babies' (Fig. 247). Like aged men taught
to suffer by much hard experience they saw risks every-
where, from avalanches, quicksands, sudden floods, robbers,
even dragons; yet they were like babes in a wood when it
came to obviating any of them.
Their helplessness in meeting the ordinary difficulties
of camp-life away from civilization often put me in mind
of the attitude which the average East End slum-dweller
might assume if suddenly forced by some irresistible chance
to take his share in the marchings and campings of a rough
campaign on the Afghan border. Their organized attempts
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749
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793
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803
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813
814
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