The Gobi Desert (Mildred Cable and Francesca French, 1942)

(Out of print; these notes based on the 1950 Readers Union edition.)

‘After living for more than twenty years in the province of Shansi [Shanxi] in North China, I took the old trade-route and, with my companions Eva and Francesca French, trekked north-west past the barrier of the Great Wall and into the country which lies beyond.’ (p. 9)

So begins one of the original travellers’ tales of the Gobi to achieve wide appeal, but don’t expect the humorous and irreverent writing of a Bryson or Theroux. Mildred and Francesca were serious missionaries: their job was to spread the word and no mistake about it. So, while they dutifully recorded all they witnessed and a good deal of hearsay besides, they necessarily kept themselves at one remove from the culture they lived among for more than twenty years. Although the narrative is written in the first person, it must be remembered that the style of the day was perhaps a little dry by the standards of today: long tracts of it read more like a geography or history textbook.

That said, the book offers a fascinating insight into a time and place which must be virtually unrecognisable, now, if it hasn’t completely disappeared already. Today there are highways across the Gobi, and the sacred Buddhist shrines clogged with spotty back-packers looking for something authentic to experience. Not so when this book was written. These ladies were some tough old birds, who went through the place by mule-drawn cart, contending with sand-storms, broken axles, and gambling, opium-addicted carters. Not convinced?

‘It became a common experience of ours to depart hurriedly at midnight, or before dawn, when we heard the warning signal and the call "Brigands are on the march." A horseman might gallop past shouting the news that there was looting among the farms, or a terrified official might urge us to feed our beasts and hurry away. Once we left an inn a little before some fellow guests, and met the raiding-party on the road. It was a well-armed band, and the men prodded our bags with bayonets and scattered our luggage on the ground, but when their officer came up he ordered them not to molest us. "These ladies," he said, "are acquaintances of mine, and nothing of theirs must be touched. Ride on elsewhere." They did so, and a little later shot down the people from whom we had just parted at the inn.’ (p. 237)

When the author occasionally lets her hair down, she can be very good. One of my favourite passages follows the story of a beautiful girl, taken with other prisoners of war from Kashgar to Peking, who won the love of the Chinese emperor. His labours to allay her home-sickness were many and long, and finally he succeeded by planting the fragrant sand-jujube in her garden, so that the scent would waft in through her windows at night.

‘It is said that the musical sands will give out a sound even in a laboratory far from their native dunes. It may be, yet sometimes in my London home I take up a handful of Crescent Lake sand and try to make it sing, but I listen in vain for the echo of the thunder-roll of its voice. Between the leaves of a book I have pressed a small branch of sand-jujube flowers, and whenever I catch its subtle but fading fragrance, I, like the Kashgarian exile, long for a place that seems so near and is yet so far away. Sick with longing I walk among the crowds while my spirit flees to the quiet which is found by the hidden lake among the dunes.’ (p. 68)

Recommendation: Recommended.

Look and Feel: My edition is a nice old 1950 edition RU hardback, which I was lucky enough to obtain from the Barnes & Noble out-of-print service, on their web site.

Peripatus Home Page

Books >> Genre >> Travel >> The Gobi Desert

Contact me.