Travels of a pioneer of commerce in pigtail and petticoats; or, An overland journey from China towards India . ^ as they toiled along with their heavyburthens ; the party now met with, however, particularlyarrested my attention. They were carrying a large consign-ment of tea, sent as a present by the Chinese Governmentto the Grand Lama at Lhassa, and had been impressed forthe service by the Mandarins, who, out of their daily wagesof two hundred chen, pocketed one hundred and fifty, leavingthe poor wretches barely sufficient to purchase half a rationof Indian corn-meal. Their aspect was pitiabl
Travels of a pioneer of commerce in pigtail and petticoats; or, An overland journey from China towards India . ^ as they toiled along with their heavyburthens ; the party now met with, however, particularlyarrested my attention. They were carrying a large consign-ment of tea, sent as a present by the Chinese Governmentto the Grand Lama at Lhassa, and had been impressed forthe service by the Mandarins, who, out of their daily wagesof two hundred chen, pocketed one hundred and fifty, leavingthe poor wretches barely sufficient to purchase half a rationof Indian corn-meal. Their aspect was pitiable in the ex-treme ; each man carried on an average eight baskets of tea,equal to 160 lbs., and many of them carried twelve basketsor 240 lbs. weight. The baskets were packed one above theother in a wooden frame, slung on the shoulders by means of Ch. VII.] TEA-CARRIEES. 201 broad leather straps ; the frame was so constructed as to curveover the head, causing fully half the load to rest above the. COOLIES CARRYING BRICK TEA. shoulders, and compelling the bearer to march with his headbent forward; thus equipped and half starved they had toperform their laborious journey of one hundred and fiftymiles, the legitimate profit of their toil not coming to them,but going into the pockets of the Mandarins. 202 TEAYELS OF A PIONEER OF COMMERCE. [Ch. YII. We had now fairly entered the terrible and gloomy gorgeof Ta-tsian-loo, at the head of which lies the border town ofthat name. This defile strikes at right angles the west orright bank of the Ta-tow-ho, where it receives the waters ofthe Ta-tsian-loo river, or rather torrent, which foams downa succession of falls through the gorge. For twenty miles on either hand cliffs one thousand totwelve hundred feet high, and approaching each other some-times within twenty or thirty yards, rise perpendicularly,their summits capped with snow, while a cloud of mistoverhangs the lower depths, producing even at mid-day anobscure twilight. The torrent, a
Size: 1529px × 1634px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookidtravelsofpionee00coop
