West of the Liao river, almost as far as the railway, there extended at that time a No-man's Land, with which I had previously been acquainted in works of fiction alone. My trip was like a plunge into the Scottish border of the sixteenth century. Instead of riding behind the Orange banner of the Cossacks, I seemed to be moving in the train of Shane O'Neil or Wallenstein. Instead of chasing Manchurian " Razboyneeke," I was chasing Irish Rapparees.
In this No-man's Land the villages were all fortified, in a humble way of course, but still fortified, with mounds and trenches. There was as a rule no drawbridge, only a very narrow path running through a gap in the ditch which surrounded the village. Inside the wall at this point there was always a little hut in which Chinese soldiers, with red-trimmed garments and an enormous Chinese character embroidered in crimson on the breast of each man's coat, kept watch and ward. On the eastern bank of the Liao-ho, the sole defensive weapons which the Chinese soldiers were allowed by the Russians to carry were long poles which for purposes of offence or defence were as pathetically and ridiculously useless as tooth-picks. On the western bank they were permitted to have rifles, so long as these rifles bore the Russian mark. The Russians were exceedingly apt to mistake them for Hunghuze and to shoot them on sight; while the Hunghuze always regarded them of course as natural enemies, so that, taking one consideration with another, the life of the almond-eyed guardian of the peace on the banks of the Liao-ho was at this time one of considerable anxiety. The same must be said of the unfortunate villagers whom these policemen were supposed to protect, for, though solitary bandits might be driven off, there was no chance of any village holding out against regular troops or even against the well-organised and well-armed bands of robbers who at that time patrolled the Liao valley.
Nevertheless, they seemed to have then collected inside their enclosures great quantities of " kiaoliang " stalks (for fuel) and of grain, and they used to keep their cattle there all winter, exactly as people did in troubled districts in Europe during the Middle Ages, as the names of many villages there still attest.
I used often, as I saw children staring at me, open-mouthed, from the mud-walls of the villages, to exclaim to myself: " What a training this is for a child! " And certainly, to live in a fortified village and frequently to see men killed is a unique if not a pleasant experience. But it was an experience our own fathers had.
Every village seemed to be a little republic. The elders ruled. Their married and unmarried children alike looked up to them for guidance. China seemed to have no representatives, civil or military, among them.
Lieutenant Burtin was astonished at this defencelessness of the Chinese.
"Why," he cried more than once, "this people deserve all they get. They have voluntarily disarmed themselves."
Nevertheless, his sensitive conscience was sometimes troubled about these poor Celestials. He did not like the way in which his Cossack orderly — who did not seem to have any conscience worth mentioning — commandeered Chinese forage, or crossed himself and said an elaborate grace over a chicken which he had not paid for; and although I once assured him that a lump sum was always given by our colonel to the village headman, I feel sure that he privately paid something on his own account so as to avoid any infraction of the Seventh Commandment. I may here mention that this young Frenchman was a very earnest Roman Catholic.
Owing to the severity of the winter the villagers had not much to do beyond gazing helplessly from their mud-walls on the different armed bands that rode within their ken. They crowded these walls as we approached, but wisely refrained from making any hostile demonstration. They always took the greatest possible pains, however, to induce us to go elsewhere. They invariably knew of a place a few "li " further on, where there were absolutely perfect houses —large, commodious, warm, overflowing with food and drink, and inhabited by kindly hearted people who simply doted on the Russians and had been waiting in vain for years an opportunity of entertaining them. We never managed, however, to find these people, or, if we did, they concealed their pro- Russian proclivities with remarkable success.
As we moved further west of the Liao river, we noticed a shade of difference in the character and even in the language of the people. There was also a slight change in the style of architecture. The houses were like this —
No ceiling.
on the east side of the Liao; on the west they were often like this —
Ceiling.