their herds;[1] and caravans take circuitous routes in order to avoid meeting the soldiers.
Garrison troops also commit the same depredations. After first pillaging the country in the immediate vicinity of the town in which they are quartered, they proceed in small detachments on more distant forays which sometimes last for several days. The commander receives his share of the booty, and everything is arranged satisfactorily. Officers of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, rob the government as much as they can. The chief source of their illicit earnings is derived from the pay of soldiers who have died or deserted, which they continue to receive long after it has ceased to be due. Desertion is so common that many of the battalions are reduced from 1,000 to 100 men, and it has been confidently asserted that the 70,000 troops on the Hoang-ho actually do not number more than 30,000. All these facts are of course concealed from the government at Peking.
The severest penalties will not check these offences, or restore the morale of the army. The ordinary punishment for light offences is the bastinado, applied on the soles of the feet with bamboo sticks, but desertion, insubordination, and in some
- ↑ So says Marco Polo, of the people near the western parts of the Gobi: 'When an army passes through the land, the people escape, with their wives, children, and cattle, a distance of two or three days' journey into the sandy waste; and knowing the spots where water is to be had they are able to live there, and to keep their cattle alive, whilst it is impossible to discover them; for the wind immediately blows the sand over their track.' — Book I. ch. 38. — Y.
