Confessions of Aleister Crowley

305 men could not stand the climate, especially as no proper accommodations had been provided to house them. In six months only five hundred were left. On March 14th we left Mengtsz for Manhao on the Red River --- three days' easy travelling. The very first night, an unpleasant incident took place. Wilkinson had made me promise on no account to strike any of the men but to rely on him to punish any misconduct when they returned to Yunnanfu. It seemed as if they knew of this compact and the Great God Wilkinson seemed very far off to them. I could feel instinctively that the respect, akin to godly fear, which I had previously inspired was less powerful as an inhibition. We slept on the fourteenth at a seerai, dirty and entirely comfortless. I paid the host more than liberally; but he was insolent and I had no means of abating the nuisance. This emboldened my own coolies to be mutinous; and in the course of a squabble with my wife (I being ahead out of sight) one of them struck the baby. I ground my teeth; but resolved to keep my temper and my promise to the consul. The fifteenth was a long march over muddy cobbles full of holes where my horse constantly slipped an stumbled. It blew great guns and poured blue cats all day. We reached a village with an alleged European hotel; the "Sino-France", {496} a wattled hotel, unspeakably foul; the worst place I had yet struck in all Asia. Manhao is a fine village situated on the banks of the Red River --- a torrent which competes with the Salween for pre-eminence in deadliness, both from disease and demons. The Chinese refuse to sleep even a single night in the valley; but I saw no cachectics in the village any more than I had seen victims of opium elsewhere. The Red River at this point runs through a deep and narrow gorge. We found it stiflingly hot, after our long exposure to the icy winds of the plateau. I had hired a dup-out to take us down the rapids to Hokow, and her I saw my chance of getting even with the coolies. Having got everything aboard, I proceeded to pay the head man the exact sum due to him --- less certain fines. Then the band played. They started to threaten the crew and prevented them from casting off the ropes. They incited the bystanders to take their part; and presently we had thirty or forty yelling maniacs preparing to stone us. I got out my .400 Cordite Express and told Salama to wade ashore and untie the ropes. But like all Kashmiris, thoughtlessly brave in the face of elemental dangers, he was an absolute coward when opposed to men. I told him that unless be obeyed at once I would begin by shooting him. He saw I meant it and did his duty; while I covered the crowd with my rifle. Not a stone was thrown; three minutes later the fierce current had swept us away from the rioters. The real danger now began. This was the only part of the journey where we encountered any serious risk of disaster. The Red River, though broad and deep, has all the characteristics of the wildest mountain torrents. It falls in a succession of dangerous rapids, all the more perilous for the sudden sharp curves of the channel. At almost every corner we saw one or more wrecks, a far from reassuring spectacle. I was given to understand, however, that disaster rarely overtook boats going down stream. It is when they are being towed by insufficient power up the rapids that they get out of control and are dashed upon the rocks. For all that, we managed to hit two nasty snags in the course of the day; one of them ripped a hole in us amidships; but the men managed to stop the leak with tarpaulin nailed in place by short boards with extraordinary speed and efficiency. They were evidently well accustomed to similar jobs. We reached Hokow on the eighteenth and struck a forlorn Englishman who gave us tiffin and dined with us. We all got gloriously drunk celebrating the success of a journey which in the opinion of all reasonable people was a crazy escapade, doomed from the first to disaster. Another bubble had burst! The awe-inspiring adventure had proved as safe as a bus ride from the Bank to Battersea. {497}