The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877Various
History
The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877
Various
American literature -- Periodicals
The end of Soleiman was dramatic in the extreme. He was told that his
followers should be spared if he himself would surrender. He agreed to
the terms, and, after administering a dose of poison to himself, his
three wives and five children, he mounted his chair, and was borne to
the camp of his enemies, where he arrived a corpse sitting erect, the
imperial turban on his head and the keys of his capital clasped tightly
in his hand. His head, preserved in honey, was sent to Peking. The
imperial troops poured into Tali-fu. A general massacre occurred. Those
Mohammedans that were not slaughtered fled to the mountains, where they
still continued to keep up a guerilla warfare. But the rebellion was
practically at an end, and by 1874 the authority of the central
government was firmly established throughout the province.
The trade between Burmah and China, which had ceased almost entirely
during the long years of the rebellion, again sprang into activity, and
once more the attention of the Indian government was attracted to it. In
1874 a new expedition of exploration was prepared and placed under the
command of Colonel Browne. The consent of the King of Burmah was
obtained, and the British minister in Peking, Mr. Thomas Wade, was
instructed to explain the object of the mission to the Chinese
government, so that it might receive no opposition upon crossing the
Chinese frontier. It was also arranged that a special messenger should
be despatched from Peking across China to the frontier to act as
interpreter to the expedition, and to prepare the mandarins along the
route for its approach. For this responsible and dangerous service,
Augustus Raymond Margary was selected--a young man attached to the
English consular department, a perfect master of the Chinese language
and customs, and a fine type of the best class of young Englishmen.
Provided with the necessary passports from the British minister,
countersigned by the Tsung-li-yamen, the Chinese foreign office, Mr.
Margary started on his journey. He went up the Yangtsze river as far as
Hankow in one of the huge American steamers of the Shanghai Steam
Navigation Company. At Hankow, on September 4, 1874, he bade good-by to
Western civilization, and, with a Chinese teacher and two or three
Chinese attendants, began his trip through a vast and populous country,
a _terra incognita_ to Europeans.
His diary of this journey has recently been published. It is interesting
in the extreme, though devoid of those startling episodes that generally
give charm to accounts of travels in unexplored lands.
He has no old theories to prove and no ambition to start new ones, but
simply jots down his impressions of people and things with no attempt at
elaboration. The result is, we have a plain, faithful, unvarnished
picture of Chinese life and manners, as seen by an intelligent,
unprejudiced man. Upon the whole, we think this picture most decidedly
favorable to the Chinese character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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