31
Climbing Higher
(1919)

The Round Top bungalow at White Deer Summit was more to our liking than ever that summer, and it took us only a couple of days to be all settled. It meant everything for the lads, who could roam and climb to their hearts' content. Cultivated fields with their unsavory fertilization were far below us: our mountaintop was all wild country.^[1] Bob could join us only for long weekends now and then, but his visits were times of the greatest happiness. During cool, damp weather, we would have a coke fire in the living room fireplace. Many evenings we popped corn and sat with no light save that from the luminous coke. We especially loved this black fuel with its glowing, fiery incandescence topped by vivid blue, dancing flames.

Our youngsters came near missing their Fourth of July celebration. Fireworks that had been expected from Chengtu did not arrive. The few simple firecrackers that the cook was able to find at a village market had to suffice. Then about 6:00 P.M. on the Fourth, as I was returning from a stroll, the three boys met me with the exciting news that Lao Liu, Bob's horse coolie, had arrived. He had been delayed by a bad storm on the two-day trip from Chengtu. I hastily sent out a note inviting all the children on the hill (save a few with whooping cough). As soon as supper was finished, we hung "Old Glory" in front of the bungalow, and everything was set for a gay evening. There were a lot of "Shadows of the Moon in a Dish" (whirligigs that rise from a plate, giving off showers of sparks), "Spirit Swords" (fire rockets), "Electric Lights" (which produce a brilliant blue light), and a few other

[1] The stockaded mountaintop was now becoming less wild. More bungalows were being constructed. A residents' association built community facilities such as tennis courts. We all joined work teams to improve paths, build seats at view points, and so forth. Some of us boys made a little income (figured in coppers) as ball boys at the tennis courts. And I delivered the mail (just for the glory of it).

things such as "Fire Wells." One of these had fifteen fireballs that rose in a series of ever-ascending arcs.

I devoted a good part of the next day to trying out my new fireless cooker. We had brought it from America in 1916, but it did not reach us in time to be used on the mountain until this summer of 1919. I roasted a chicken and made two cakes. In the afternoon I had a few ladies in for tea, and when they arrived I had two tins of baking-powder biscuits all ready to lift from the cooker. Everyone was interested. The hot coke fire in our native kitchen stove was ideal for heating the radiators. Our servants regarded the whole apparatus as some kind of magic. When the steam first puffed from the relief valve on the cooker's lid, Amah was terribly frightened and rushed off to a far corner. "What," she exclaimed, "will this foreign thing do next!"^[2]

Chinese guests on the mountain were just as hard to plan for as in the city. One Friday, the head of the mintuan (constabulary) in the village at the foot of the mountain sent word that he would call the next day. We expected a short visit for tea, so I had the cook make a very nice cake. On Saturday morning I went out on an errand. When I returned, the guest had arrived— bringing nine retainers. Although the morning had started out bright and beautiful, by twelve noon it was raining pitchforks. A meal, obviously, had to be offered. The servants knuckled right in without a word of direction from me and got up a very good Chinese meal. They had to use their own rice, as we had little on hand. This is where Chinese servants are strong: they regard such emergencies as involving the whole family and do not want to fail in courtesy. With two Chinese guests already staying in the house, there were thirteen men to be fed.

At the end of July the Braces returned from furlough bringing with them a young American, Earl Dome, for the Chengtu Y. Bob brought Earl up to White Deer Summit in August, and he was with us for the rest of the summer, though he sometimes had to be placed with other friends to make room for other guests. During the annual meeting of the White Deer Summit Association we had a regular house party, including our old friends Harry and Lona Openshaw.

Jack celebrated his birthday [in early August] with a big cake, candles, and fifteen hundred firecrackers. I was reading Boswell's Life of Johnson , and also George Adam Smith's Life of Henry Drummond , along with various light literature.

In August Bob and I took the two older boys and Earl Dome on a trip into the high mountains. It was going to be wild country, with few temples and those mostly broken down, with few priests or available supplies. Before we left, the cook baked a lot of bread and biscuits. We also had some tins of soda

[2] After the novelty wore off, I don't recall that the fireless cooker was used very often. Bob was one of the world's great enthusiasts for gadgets. It is a trait that he passed on to his sons.

biscuits. And in some places we could buy cornmeal, which we made into mush and fried for breakfast.

I had a very light mountain sedan chair carried by two men. Three men carried the food supplies, and three more transported our cots and bed rolls. Then there was the Boy, who could cook well enough for our simple needs and was a better traveler than the cook. And finally, even though the horse was left at home, we had the horse coolie, Lao Liu, because he was such a competent and useful man for such adventures. Having these ten Chinese, who had to eat, put a limit on how far we could get into the wilds. Jack walked all the way, along with Bob and Earl, but Bobbie sometimes had a ride on a carrier's back-frame.

We skirted Tientai (which we had climbed the year before) and struck out for Jiufeng (Nine Peaks). We always found a temple to camp in, but they were in all stages of dilapidation. The one where we stayed the first night had merely two caretakers, no priests, and all the idols had been placed in the only large room with a good roof. The next one was a bit better, with three or four priests. By the third night we were in a very good temple, with a lot of priests, at the top of Nine Peaks.

The elevation here was 10,500 feet. We had a suite of three rooms, but life seemed to gravitate to the public fire in the front room of the temple. This was a roofed court with an earth floor and an ever-burning fire of pine logs. Hanging by long soot-laden chains from the rafters was always a huge kettle of boiling water, and perhaps one of steaming brick tea as well. Circling the fire were low benches made from the curved boles of trees. A trunk cut into half made two planks: adding wooden pegs made two very solid benches. Here we sat among the other travelers and pilgrims, priests at leisure, and our own carriers—all on the same level there on the high mountain. I thought of our ancient Anglo-Saxon forebears in their old halls.

The next day Bobbie and I took things easy while the two men and Jack climbed the highest of the Nine Peaks. It was 11,725 feet, and they had magnificent views.

Our next mountain was Yunhua (Cloud Flowers). The approach was wonderful, following a mountain torrent up a steep valley with wild scenery and lovely cascades and waterfalls. One suspension bridge was made of iron rods, about forty inches long, with rings at each end and linked together to form chains. It was a good place to stop for a picnic lunch. We had baked beans, quickly heated on our alcohol stove, while our men regaled themselves on corn pones which they had carried in their sashes.

Our temple that night was dedicated to the Goddess of Mercy but was a wild and desolate ruin. There was no priest, only a half-blind caretaker who could barely see us. Everything was filthy, the roof half gone, only one room in decent repair—and that was open at one end. There was a corn field

nearby, and we soon had a campfire boiling fresh ears of field corn still in the milky stage. We made a supper of Campbell's soup, crackers, and corn, sharing the latter with the men.

The next day we arrived at the top (10,300 feet) in time for the men to climb the highest peak, which they were disappointed to find was only 11,300 feet. This temple was in much better condition. We had a fairly good room, and could cook at a central open fire as at Nine Peaks. But what a worried time as I had there!

When we arrived, I found that small Bob could not speak aloud. Croup, I well knew, was in the offing. I never traveled in those days without camphorated oil, squills, and ipecac. I hastened to the road box; to my horror none of the three indispensables was there. I remembered setting them out for packing, but that was little help on our high and remote mountain. But I was not without resource. As soon as we ate, I put the child to bed, rolling him tightly in a woolen blanket. I gave him all the very hot cocoa that he could swallow. Meanwhile the Boy made a batch of porridge, using our home-prepared cracked wheat. With this at the sticky-mush stage, I soon had the child packed in poultices around the neck and chest. They were hot, hotter, and he thought hottest, but I kept at work, scraping off one lot of porridge and replacing the poultices with fresh, hotter porridge until the child was red as any lobster.

I really was in a frenzy to have him so ill with croup at that elevation and when we were having a pleasure jaunt. I even began to think it would be better to be a woman who wanted to sit at home in a giddy summer dress than one to scour off to mountain tops with the men folks. What would l have done had anything gone wrong? One does not need to answer, for it all ended well. Finally, Bobbie began to speak easily. I changed the poultices once again, gave him a potash tablet to suck, and he fell asleep, worn out with my attentions.

At that time we were the only Americans who had made the Cloud Flowers ascent. And, according to the records, I was the first Western woman to climb Cloud Flowers and the eighth foreigner to go up Nine Peaks.^[3] Now many have gone up those heights. In the summer season pilgrims come to worship at the shrines, and a few priests will go up from lower temples with food, bedding, and such things to care for the visitors. We were a little too late on that 1919 trip for the pilgrim season.

There was much beauty on these mountain tops. Flowers spread a veritable carpet on fiat places and were in every nook and cranny. The eidelweiss

[3] In view of the important contribution of the stout-legged sedan-chair bearers, perhaps "ascent" would be a better word than "climb" to describe Grace's achievement. The accuracy of these records probably depends on whether those notebooks at the summit temples, in which we and other travelers inscribed their names, had been left there by the first Westerners to arrive.

was particularly fine that year. We had magnificent views of higher mountains—some perhaps as high as 20,000 feet. Often we were overtaken by rain storms and sometimes took refuge in caves or shacks along the way. Once I found a dry place in a cave used by potash burners. They were black with dirt and soot, and seemed to live animal-like lives at their grimy toil. A few torn and dirty pieces of bedding, with rude bowls, chopsticks, and a kettle, appeared to be their only equipment.

Down near the foot of the mountain we failed to make the day's planned stage. A desolate building was our only choice for the night. It turned out to be an old temple, most of which was rented to some rough-looking blacksmiths who were working, somewhat mysteriously, at night. We wondered if they supplied weapons to bandits, and when we discovered they were making gun barrels we were sure of it.^[4] The only room available for us was also a storeroom for occupied coffins awaiting burial. We four slept in our cots at one end, and Earl laid himself out on a door at the other. His cot and another load had failed to arrive with us, so we loaned him bedding; and for a bed, the door was the best to be had.

The next day we went on to White Water River and its copper smelter. And then up our hill and back to Round Top's hospitality. After these trips the bungalow looked luxurious and oh, so clean . To sit at table with dainty linen and one's usual garments felt like entering into a new existence.

We never forgot that trip. It meant croup to me, and the feeling that I had won out. One remembered story, though, concerned our Boy—faithful, conscientious Lao Wu. At the Nine Peaks temple, the only water was in huge storage tubs under the eaves. To get water, one had to stand on a bench, reach over the top, and use a dipper. Sent to get water soon after our arrival, Lao Wu found himself confronted with a massive tub higher than he was. But near the bottom was a wooden bung. A wrench removed the bung, but Lao Wu found himself sent sprawling by a cold stream that hit him in the solar plexus. The priest-custodian of the temple kitchen delivered a thorough and systematic cursing of the ancestors and entire family of the unfortunate principal. Lao Wu looked unhappy thereafter if Nine Peaks were even mentioned.

[4] My recollection of the weapons making is a little less sinister. There was one busy forge, with a master gunsmith and a couple of apprentices. The master was proud of his skill and happy to have an audience (we were almost certainly the first Westerners he had ever seen). There was some banter, initiated by Bob, about the intended use of the gun they were making. Strictly for hunting, insisted the gunsmith. I was skeptical about its accuracy. "Don't be too sure," said Bob, "Daniel Boone used to shoot squirrels with a gun just about like that."