If the reader will picture to his fancy this landscape, peopled with men of effeminate look with long pig-tails, and women with painted faces presenting the appearance of wax figures, he will form some idea of the country we traversed in descending from the Great Wall of China.
First view of China proper--Last Russian hospitality--The Palankeen--The streets of Kalkann--Travelling along the Great Wall--The Secret Societies--Chinese Art--How order is maintained--Origin of the tress--How the titles of Chinese nobility become extinct.
We were hospitably received in a Chinese house belonging to a Russian, a friend of M. Schévélof. This house was charmingly situated out of the town, on the other side of the brook I have just mentioned, and, consequently, in view of the mountain we had lately descended surmounted with the irregular outline of the Great Wall.
It was the last Russian house into which I entered, and not the least agreeable. During my leisure in the day I went to ramble about this strange country and among the still more strange people.
I lounged also many hours on the balcony of this house, where I took refreshments, agreeably occupied in contemplating the scene around me. I shall never forget these days of _far niente_ passed at Kalkann after the long monotonous passage of the Gobi without stages and almost without repose. I was approaching at last the goal of my travels--that city of Pekin, towards which I had been almost daily moving for the last seven months. I was indeed in China at last, and all my surroundings forcibly impressed me with the novelty of my situation. I was never tired of watching every object, every incident, from my observatory, and when evening closed in I quitted it with regret.
Then we retired to a distant room. Wassili Michäelovitch, as well as a young inhabitant of Tien-tsin who happened to be visiting Kalkann, played on the guitar, and, in listening to the melancholy notes of their melodies, I recalled to memory the far-reaching steppe of Omsk and its changing aspects, the perilous night adventure in the snow on leaving Tumen, the savage grandeur of the frozen Angara, the terrors of the lonely Baikal, Mrs. Grant and Constantine--all my adventures in Siberia,--in fact, that now, with the rigours of an Arctic winter, were things of the past. The remembrance of all these incidents I cherished with that genial sensation that is experienced when we find ourselves safe at the end of a series of perilous adventures, provided they leave behind no ill consequences, but, on the contrary, a feeling of congratulation that we have so happily escaped them.