CHAPTER XVIII.

THE JOURNEY FROM TALI, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER OF THE
CANTONESE, CHINESE EMIGRANTS, CRETINS, AND WIFE-BEATING IN CHINA.

The three men who had come with me the six hundred and seventeen miles
from Chaotong left me at Tali to return all that long way home on foot
with their well-earned savings. I was sorry to say good-bye to them; but
they had come many miles further than they intended, and their friends,
they said, would be anxious: besides Laohwan, you remember, was newly
married.

I engaged three new men in their places. They were to take me right
through to Singai (Bhamo). Every day was of importance now with four
hundred and fifty miles to travel and the rainy season closing in.
Laotseng was the name of the Chinaman whom I engaged in place of
Laohwan. He was a fine young fellow, active as a deer, strong, and
high-spirited. I agreed to pay him the fancy wage of _24s._ for the
journey. He was to carry no load, but undertook, in the event of either
of my coolies falling sick, to carry his load until a new coolie could
be engaged. The two coolies I engaged through a coolie-hong. One was a
strongly-built man, a "chop dollar," good-humoured, but of rare
ugliness. The other was the thinnest man I ever saw outside a Bowery
dime-show. He had the opium habit. He was an opium-eater rather than an
opium-smoker; and he ate the ash from the opium-pipe, instead of the
opium itself--the most vicious of the methods of taking opium. He was
the nearest approach I saw in China to the Exeter Hall type of
opium-eater, whose "wasted limbs and palsied hands" cry out against the
sin of the opium traffic. Though a victim of the injustice of England,
this man had never tasted Indian opium in his life, and, perishing as he
was in body and soul, going "straight to eternal damnation," his "dying
wail unheard," he yet undertook a journey that would have deterred the
majority of Englishmen, and agreed to carry, at forced speed, a far
heavier load than the English soldier is ever weighted with on march.
The two coolies were to be paid 4 taels each (_12s._) for the twenty
stages to Singai, and had to find their own board and lodging. But I
also stipulated to give them _churo_ money (pork money) of 100 cash each
at three places--Yungchang, Tengyueh, and Bhamo--100 cash each a day
extra for every day that I detained them on the way, and, in addition, I
was to reward them with 150 cash each a day for every day that