AMONG STRANGE PEOPLE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 59, 27 July 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

AMONG STRANGE PEOPLE

A FRENCHMAN IN CHINA. EXCITING EXPERIENCES Tlic great explorers of old, who made their names iminorul by multiplying tenfold the habitable world, did their work so well that there is practically nothing of the same kind left for their successors to achieve. There are no new continents to discover or to explore; even the two Poles have been reached; there would seem to be nothing left to travel for; exploration might well have become merely a superior sort of sport for the adventurous. But this is not really the case; no period has exhibited such a fever for exploration as the present—only it is exploration of a new kind. The old explorer went out in search of new territory; the new explorer goes out; in search of facts. The savage races of the world used to be looked on merely as subjects for idle curiosity, or as possible sources of profit, or as targets for missionary zeal; nowadays they ara regarded as objects of scientific research. The explorer of to-day is expected to be a scientist—or, rather, a number of scientists rolled into one: a sociologist, an anthropologist, an arcaeologist, a philologist, and heaven knows what besides. He studies the custom of the barbarian races, he measures their skulls, he copies out the inscriptions on their ancient tombs, he studies their language, he comes back laden with scientific booty. Happily, however, while exploration has become scientific it remains adventurous; the note-book, the camera and the measuring tape have not yet quite superseded the rifle and the automatic pistol in the explorer's equipment. This truth is clearly illustrated in the narrative of an intrepid Fiench traveller, M. le Vicomte D'Ollone, who has been studying, on the spot, the non-Chinese races of China, and especially a very remarkable people, the Lolos. who inhabit a well-nigh inaccessible mountain region in Southern China. M. D'Ollone, who is a major in the French army, has recounted his adventures in a book, which, admirably translated by Mr. Bernal Miall, is now presented to English readers under the title of "In Forbidden China." Next to Mr. Stein's great work, "The Ruins of Desert Cathay," this is certainly the most absorbing book of Asiatic travel that has been published in recent years. ■Major D'Ollone. with his subordinates —three French officers—marched or rode for 5000 miles, and he has 'brought hack 2000 photographs, more than 200 anthropological measurements, 46 vocabularies of non-Chinese dialects, four dictionaries of native characters hitherto undeciphered, hundreds of inscriptions relating to historical events, and numerous weapons, 1 utensils, examples of pottery, coins, 1 paintings, etc., and an abundant harvest of observations. The scientific value of his haul cannot yet he estimated; the results are being published by the French Government in seven volumes, on which several eminent scholars have collaborated. The present work, however, is intended for the unscientific reader; in it, for the most part, the scientific aspects of the expedition are ignored, and the author contents himself with a personal narrative—a narrative of incredible hardships endured and of a long succession of dangers faced, of precipitous mountains climbed, and all manner of formidable obstacles overcome. Major D'Ollone is never weary of praising the feats of his three companions, but it is easy to see that he himself must be a man of rare courage and indomitable resolution. In the mountain regions of China there live, at the present time, peoples who do not appear to belong to the yellow race, and who have retained their own languages and their own customs, but who have been forced to recognise the domination of the Chinese. But there are at least three of these alien peoples who have resisted conquest by an invincible opposition, so that they retain to-day. in the very heart of China, their perfect independence. Their, countries, which are zealously guarded from the intrusion of the foreigner, may be called the only portions of the globe which remain unexplored. To one of these peoples, the Lolos of Sze-Chuan, the author devoted special attention, and the most interesting part of his book deals with this remarkable race, which for many centuries has defied the Chinese Empire, and which will probably continue to defy the Chinese Republic. There is nothing of the Asiatic about these people. The complexion is not yellow, but swarthy, like that of the inhabitants of Southern Europe; the eyes are neither oblique nor flattened, and the nose is aquiline. The men are tall, and of a soldierly bearing; their faces wear a rank and open expression. They reminded Major D'Ollone of Red Indians. "VYh.it superb redskins these men would make, with a plume of feathers or a v:ir-bnnnpt on the head!" Their organisation is feudal: :>*, the bead of each clan is a prince: uud-r him are the nobles, or seigneurs, the ruling class; then come the serfs, mainly e.embers of conquered clans —for the Lobo clans are continually at war with one another; lowest of all are the slaves, who are not Lolos. but Chinese. When the Lolo warriors are in need of mores laves, they swoop down from their mountain fastnesses upon the plains below, and return from their raid with the required number of captives. Except as a slave, no Chinese is allowed to enter Lolo territory unless he has a special permit, in which case he is kept under strict surveillance during his stay in the country. The chief reason, apparently, why the Lolos exclude the stranger is that they suspect him of prospecting for precious metals; thev fear, above all things, the discovery of gold or silver in their territory, because such a discovery would provoke invasion. Between their frays, the. Lolos enter into peaceful trade relations with the Chinese. This is a fine example of the overpowering strength of an economic law; these people are bound to trade with one another, because each has something which the other cannot do without. 0 The Lolo wants firearms for his raids, and he can buy them from no one but the vcrv people against whom he inlends to use them! (The rifle is not much good to him, however, for he can seldom"get a supply of cartridges of the risrht calibre; therefore, he still relies niainlv on his anicent weapon, the slender lance, of from 25ft to 30ft in length). The Chinese, in turn, want something which onlv the Lolos can sell: the wax I insect This insect has the property of eausiii" a much-valued wax to flow from certain trees by perforating their tissues These trees grow only in the hot plain country of Sze-Chuan, while the insect breeds hardly anywhere except in the Lolo countrv. Several thousands of Chinese accordingly climb the mountains each vear. and enter the forbidden conn!-n—With passports, and, as we have noted,' under strict survcillance-in search of the esrgs of the precious insect. To be allowed to get into the country ~( all Major D'Ollone had to task all his wits- and he was ingenuiously assisted l,v V Jesuit Father, who had for years lived among the Chinese and longed to vi-.it the Lolos. By persistence, and Dine slratcTV they succeeded at last in winnin" over'tl.e first clan; but the clans ~,-,. almost always at feud with one another and new manoeuvring was always necessary to pass from one clan to an-

other. Tin: author, although mil, a braggart, does not under-state the danger of tin- enterprise, knowing that to do so is unfair to explorers who may follow him. That the danger was. great has since been shown by what happened to an Englishman, Brooke, who was besieged in a Lolo house, and, after a heroic resistance, was massacred with 14 of his men. Major D'OUoiic saved himself again and again by an exhibition of marksmanship with his repeating carbine or his automatic pistol. The powers of these weapons always tilled the wavering chiefs with a stupefied admiration; they were warriors at heart, and they could not but admire warriors who possessed such beautiful weapons; in the end, they ■became good friends with in the intruders. Before he had finished with them, Major D'Ollone came to conceive a high admiration for their character; they appear to have the virtues and the faults of a warlike race, They are cruel and ferocious to their enemies: but they neither lie nor steal nor break their plighted word; and they hold the laws of hospitality sacred. Again and again, as we read this narrative, we are reminded of the Highland clans of Scotland in bygone times. Excellent photographs show us the cross, in order to enter and to leave the Lolo territory; a country of crags and peaks, of colossal walls of rock, of frightful chasms—a landscape that looks like the debris of some enormous cataclysm. On one occasion they were riding up a precipitous path, when one of the horses, on which a Chinese was riding, slipped over the edge. The rider was caught by a tuft of bamboos, and was quickly recovered; the horse hung for a time over the abyss, holding on by its forelegs, and clawing desperately at the path. Presently its strength gave out, and it fell like a, log; from time to time they heard the sound of its body as it struck upon a crag and rebounded. The loss was a double one, because, strapped to the saddle-bow, was an automatic pistol in its holster—a thing they could ill spare. When, however, the Lolo guides heard that this wonderful weapon was in the saddle, two of them threw off their mantles and rushed headlong down through the breach in the bamboos which the falling horse had made. Twenty minutes later they reappeared with the pistol, which was almost uninjured. They' were smiling with satisfaction; they were out of breath; and they seemed not to notice the bleeding stripes on their hands and almost naked bodies, made by the spines of the bamboos through which they slipped on their downward path, seizing them with half-shut hands to check their descent. It is little wonder that Major D'Ollone objects to such men being called a decadent race, and thinks them, on the contrary,'"a people that will one day play a part in the destinies of the East."