I
have myself travelled several thousand miles in China and Tartary,
always at the maximum rate of 30 miles a day; more usually 20,
allowing for delays, bad roads, and accidents. In Dr. Legge's
translation of the "Book of Odes," p. 281, there is a song about a
great expedition against the Tartars in 827 B.C., one line of
which is precisely, as translated by Dr. Legge: "and we marched
thirty _li_ every day,"-which means only ten miles.
This is the chief journey; and whether the Chou Emperor in 984
B.C., or the Ts'in Duke in 650 B.C., made it, there are really no
difficulties, no contradictions. Four important places at least
are named which are known by exactly the same names, and are
frequently mentioned, in very much later history. The Emperor had
hundreds of carts or chariots with him, and we have seen that
these were a special feature of orthodox China. He came across a
huge moulting-ground of birds in the desert regions, and the later
Chinese very frequently speak of it in Tartar-land. Being caught
in the waterless desert, he had to cut the throats of some of his
best horses and drink their warm blood: two friends of my own,
travelling through Siberia and Mongolia, were only too glad, when
nearly starving from cold, to cut a sheep's throat and drink its
warm blood from the newly-gashed throat itself.
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