Author Description

This fascinating journey details the local traditions and characteristics of a China that has since disappeared. With tales of the mystic temples and monasteries, stories of a 1000 year old monk, and areas not yet open to the modern railway or airplane, Johnston's writings could easily have been the inspiration for James Hilton's Lost Horizon. Johnston, who eventually became tutor to the boy emperor, was district officer and magistrate of Wei-hai-wei, and was well qualified, both linguistically and by travel in other parts of China, to undertake the expedition described in the present work. In 1902 he had journeyed through Tongking, Yunnan, the Chinese Shan States, and down the Mekong to Siam; and in 1904 he had visited several of the provinces of Eastern China, and had even inspected the tomb of Confucius, and been presented to the seventy-sixth descendant in a direct line of the great philosopher and saint. The last and more ambitious tour was begun in January, 1906, the main object of the author being to explore the principalities of Eastern Tibet and thence to proceed southwards to Yunnan and Burma. Instead of ascending the Yangtse to Hankow and Ichang, Mr. Johnston followed the more interesting Lu-han railway route that the completion (a few weeks previously) of the famous bridge across the Yellow river had made possible. He was thus enabled to reach Hankow, 759 miles from the capital, in three days. The journey thence up-stream, past Ichang, is, of course, well known; at Wan-hsien the great river was abandoned, the hardy boats¬men paid off, and the land journey to Chengtu-fu commenced. Here and elsewhere it is gratifying to note the uniformly good behaviour shown to the author; even at Liang Shan, where the late Mrs. Bishop was mobbed and so seriously knocked about, he found the people orderly and good tempered. At Chengtu-fu and else¬where light was shed on some of Mr. E. C. Baber's researches, not the least interesting points referred to being the temples an