Through China with a camera/Chapter 9
Steam traffic in the China Sea—In the wake of a typhoon—Shanghai—Notes of its early history— Japanese raids—Shanghai foreign settlement—Paul Sü, or 'Su-kwang-ki'—Shanghai city—Ningpo— Native soldiers—Snowy valley—The Mountains— Azaleas—The monastery of the snowy crevice—The thousand-fathom precipice—Buddhist monks—The Yangtsze Kiang—Hankow—The Upper Yangtsze, Ichang—The Gorges—The Great Tsing-tan Rapid—Mystic mountain lights—A dangerous disaster—Kwei-fu— Our return—Kiukiang—Nanking: Its Arsenal—The Death of Tsing-kwo-fan—Chinese Superstition.
The opening of the Suez Canal wrought as great a change in the China trade as in the commerce of the Malayan Archipelago; and nowhere is this change more marked than in the carrying traffic from port to port along the coasts of China. Old lumbering junks, lorchas and even square-rigged sailing ships have given place to the splendidly equipped steamers of the local companies that ply regularly between the different stations from Hongkong to Newchang ; and then innumerable vessels, owned, not a few of them, by private firms, as well as by native and European companies, frequently find lucrative employment when the tea and silk seasons have not yet begun, either in running between the treaty ports, or in making short voyages to the rice-markets of Indo-China.
It was my good fortune to make a coasting trip to Shanghai in a fine steamer belonging to a private line, engaged in the tea trade during the greater portion of the year, but at that time making a cruise northward till the Hankow tea-market should be open. As we neared Shanghai the glass indicated either that a typhoon was approaching, or else that we were just upon its verge. The latter conclusion was a true one. It turned out that we had followed in the wake of a hurricane, and thus our experience afforded a good example of the limit- ed area to which the circles of these typhoons are frequently confined. We had encountered nothing save calms and light winds throughout our passage ; and yet when we entered Shanghai river we found many ships disabled, some of them swept clear to the deck — masts, spars and rigging having all gone over the side. Here we had to wait twelve hours till a licensed pilot came on board; and when that individual did at last make his appearance, he gravely remarked that he was only a fifteen-foot man, but that he could make it all right with another pilot of superior depth to take us up. What he meant to convey to us was that his license only allowed him to pilot vessels drawing fifteen feet. An unfortunate accident occurred as we were steaming up the Wong-poo to the wharf at Shanghai. The Chinese have a superstitious belief that bad luck will attend their voyage, if they fail at starting to cross the bows of a vessel as she sails across their track ; and so, as we steamed on, we perceived a native trading-boat making frantic efforts with sails and sculls to pass under our bows. The whistle was plied, but in vain. On they pulled to their own certain destruction. The engines could not be backed amid such a crowd of shipping, and I was gazing helplessly over our bulwarks when we came crashing through the timbers of the fated craft. There was a yell of despair, and the wreck was next seen drifting down the stream. A number of the crew had been projected by the shock some distance into the water; others clung to their property until it was submerged; but fortunately none of them perished, as a number of boats had seen the incident and had put off to their assistance at once.
Shanghai has always been able to hold its own as the great Chinese emporium of foreign trade. It was therefore with feelings of profound interest that I for the first time beheld the splen- did foreign settlement that stands there on the banks of the Wong-poo, at a spot which about sixty years ago was a mere swamp dotted with a few fisher huts, and inhabited by a miser- able semi-aquatic sort of Chinese population. In 1831 Dr. Gutzlaff, who visited the place for the first time in a junk, describes it as the centre of a great native trade, and tells us that from this port, "more than a thousand small vessels go up to the north several times annually, exporting silk and other Kiangnan manufactures," and besides, that an extensive traffic was carried on by Fukien men with the Indian Archipelago. But we may venture much further back in the history of the town. Several centuries ago, even before the Wong-poo river became a navigable stream at all, there was a great mart established in this locality on the banks of the present Soo-chow Creek, twenty-five miles distant from the harbour in which we have just anchored. * The topographical history of the district is full of records telling of the physical changes to which the vast alluvial plain where Shanghai stands has from time to time been subjected. Streams have been silted up, new channels have spontaneously opened; and yet, amid constant difficulties and never-ceasing alterations, the ever-important trade of the place has been maintained within
- See the Shanghai Hein Chi.
ART DEALERS.
CHINESE COSTER.
the same narrow area, where the annual floods of the Yang- tsze-kiang deposit their alluvium on the margin of the ocean and raise up new land out of its bed.
The political as well as the commercial and physical history of this region is no less full of interest. In process of time the old Wu-sung-kiang became unnavigable ; and during the thirteenth century, a settlement was founded on the present site of Shanghai, to which trade was rapidly transferred by the closing of the old waterway: finally, in A. D. 1544, the settle- ment was converted into a walled city, as a defence against the repeated attacks of the Japanese. These Japanese raids, which date from A. D. 1361, when the Ming dynasty had just come to the throne, were not confined to this quarter, but distributed generally over the maritime provinces in the north. The Japanese, time after time, proved more than a match for their less warlike foes ; but the latter always managed, in the long run, to prevent the daring invaders from obtaining a per- manent foothold upon their coveted shores. These Chinese successes were sometimes secured by intrigue and diplomacy, or by fair promises and bribes ; the slow-moving ponderosities of Chinese warfare being only resorted to when all else had failed. To illustrate these two methods of repelling an invading force, I will relate the following story. In 1 543 when the Japanese had spoiled and laid waste no small extent of the country around Shanghai, the Chinese seeing that they were too feeble to fight against their enemies with success, had recourse to intrigue. Accordingly, the Governor-General of the province invited the Japanese leaders, Thsu-hai, Cheng-tung, Ma-yeh, and Wang-chen to come over to the side of the Chinese; promis- ing them the rewards of high rank and untold treasure, if such valiant leaders would but join the Imperial standard. Tempted by the offer, they presented themselves to arrange conditions, and were forthwith seized, despatched to Peking and there put to an ignominious death. On another occasion it is reported that the Japanese came down upon their enemy with a fleet of 300 vessels; and after carrying all before them, and plundering to their hearts' content, they departed laden with their spoil; the Chinese troops pursuing them valiantly out of the country and making an imposing hostile demonstration on the shore as they unfurled the sails of their ships.
As to the settlement itself, those of my readers who have not visited China will feel interested in a brief description of its appearance. The approach by the river almost looks like that of any busy prosperous European seaport. There one finds ships of all nations ; and, anchored in mid-channel, or making their way to their moorings, a long line of ocean steamers; while steam-launches, bearing mails and despatches, dart in and out among the crowd of native craft that are seen around. Advancing further up the river, we pass rows of store- houses, foundries, dockyards and sheds. Next to these the substantial buildings on the American concession; and then a full view opens before us of the public garden and the impos- ing array of European offices which front the river on the EngHsh concession ground. What surprised me most about this settlement was the absence of anything temporary or unfinished in the style of its buildings, such as might remind one that the place was, after all, nothing more than a trading depot, planted on hostile and inhospitable shores, and sustained in its position in spite of the envy which its appearance excited among the rulers of the land. What pangs of regret and remorse ought to be awakened among these proud unenlightened men, when, in their moments, if any, of honest reflection, they cast their eyes upon this *' Model Settlement," and perceive that a handful of outer barbarians have, within the space of sixty years, done more with the little quagmire that was grudgingly allotted to them, than they themselves, with their highest efforts, have achieved anywhere in their own wide Empire during all the untold cen- turies of its fame. As I have said already, there is a finish about the whole settlement, a splendour and sumptuousness about its buildings, its wide roads and breathing spaces, its spacious wharves and elegant warehouses, that stand as a solemn rebuke to the niggardliness and grinding despotism which within the adjoining native city have penned thousands of struggling beings in the most temporary abodes; there to carry on a ceaseless strife for existence, breathing the fetid air of narrow polluted alleys, exposed to the constant risk of fearful conflagration and the grim horrors of pestilence or famine.
Su-kwang-ki, or *'Paul Su," celebrated as the pupil of Matthew Ricci, the great Jesuit missionary of the sixteenth century, appears to have been a man who mourned over the condition of his country. He was a native of Shanghai, a scholar of great renown ; and he not only aided Ricci in his translation of a number of the books of Euclid, but left behind him many valuable original works; notably one on agriculture, which is still highly prized. But although admitted by the Emperor Kia-tsing and his suc- cessor to be man of singular ability and foresight, his wise counsels were disregarded, and he himself was repeatedly treated with suspicion, due to the intrigues of jealous rivals. Accord- ingly his counsel was set aside, and his measures for the preser- vation and defence of the last Chinese dynasty were systematic- ally neglected. But to this day he occupies a shrine in one of the temples of Shanghai, and there his fellow-townsmen pay him reverent worship as a sort of divinely-inspired sage. Most of my readers are aware that in spite of a host of troubles (not the least of which was the Taiping rebellion, or rather, I believe, the attack upon the city by the short-sword or dagger rebels) Shanghai has continued to advance steadily, and has always maintained its position as the greatest emporium of China. It must be at the same time borne in mind that this commercial success is, in some measure at least, attributable to the European customs' administration which was inaugurated at this city in 1843, and which now extends its ramifications to all the open ports of the Empire.
Some of my readers will naturally inquire whence the labour came which transformed this dismal swamp into what I have just described, and built houses there fit for any capital of Europe and superior to some of the edifices that adorn our own greatest ports. One might think that structures such as these must have been reared by skilled workmen from Europe ; but a very short residence in Shanghai suffices to undeceive us. Then we mark the avidity with which native builders, carpenters and mechanics of every sort compete with each other to win the remunerative employment which those buildings afford, and the facility with which they pick up the extended knowledge needful to enable them to carry out their contracts and to impart to their work that elegance and perfection which the cultivated tastes of the foreign architect demand. But it is not to these buildings alone that we must look to discover the hidden resources of Chinese toil. Visit the dockyards and foundries, and there too watch the Chinese craftsmen — the shipwrights, engineers, carpenters, painters and decorators, busily at work under European foremen, who bear the highest testimony to the capabilities of their men. Pass on next to the Kiang-nan arsenal, outside the city walls, and there you will find perhaps the highest development of Chinese technical industry, in the manufacture of rifles and field-guns and the construction of ships of war.
It is computed that in 1898 there will be established at this port eighteen or twenty Chinese, Japanese and European cotton mills, equipped with the best and most modern appliances throughout. There are native mills already in operation, and in 1895 capital to the extent of 38,000 taels was subscribed by foreign joint-stock companies for the erection of four spinning and weaving mills. It will be gathered from this, and the cheap efficient labour available for the industry, that the Chinese are beginning to supply their own markets with a certain class of cotton goods, and that ere long a large export trade will be created in cotton fabrics suitable for commerce all over Eastern Asia. The native cotton is of short staple, and the thread spun only suitable for weaving the coarser fabrics of native wear.
The native walled city of Shanghai stands to the south of the foreign settlement, and is separated from it by the French concession ground, and by a canal which here sweeps round and forms with Soo-chow Creek and the river a water boundary for the entire English ground. The latter, on its western side, supports a Chinese population of over 50,000 souls; but inside the walls of the Chinese city, in an area measuring little over a mile long by three-fourths of a mile in breadth, and in a densely crowded suburb on the water's edge close by, about 130,000 inhabitants reside.
Like all other Chinese towns, Shanghai has its tutelary deity, upon whom the Emperor, as brother of the Sun, has conferred an honorary title. This guardian of the fortunes of Shanghai stands in the '* Cheng-hwang-Miau " or *' Temple of the City God, " in the northern quarter of the town; and though he and his shrine have from time to time been rudely overthrown, both, after each disaster, have been reverently restored; and now he may be seen looking out upon wide pleasure-grounds — in a more or less dilapidated state, it is true — but still now and again regaled with theatrical performances, and leading, for an idol, a not altogether unenjoyable life. In the same spot are two drum- towers, superintended by a number of inferior deities, and used more especially to spread the alarm of fire, or to notify the approach of a foe. Then there is the Confucian temple ; besides a host of other Buddhist and Taoist sacred edifices, occupying the best spaces of ground within a city where the miserable population have too often scarcely breathing space.
Our route now lies away among the azalea-clad mountains in the province of Che-kiang. But before re-embarking we must have a parting glance at the streets of the *' Model Settlement. "
There are no cabs ; but the residents, many of them, possess private carriages. The substitute for the cab here is the wheel- barrow and Japanese jinricksha — very undignified sort of convey- ances, but nevertheless comfortable enough when one has once grown accustomed to their use. Ahong procured me two of these wheelbarrows from the nearest stand, and thus, with my two boys, my baggage and *'Spot, " I set out for the Ningpo steamer. There is not much risk of accidents in a steady-going vehicle such as this. The coolie who propels it is neither skittish nor given to shying, and the pace he puts on is never dangerous.
The Portuguese were established on the river Yang at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and were finally massacred by the natives in revenge for their barbarous conduct, according to the Chinese account. These Portuguese were said about that time to have joined with the Japanese in several of their raids on the maritime provinces of China; and it will be remember- ed that, some fifty-six years ago, there was another massacre of Portuguese and Manilla men at this very same town. They were then in some way impUcated in the piracies of daily occurrence in the China Sea at that time, and the general feeling was that the retribution was not altogether undeserved. Another disaster befel Ningpo in 1861, when it fell into the the hands of the Taipings ; remaining in their possession for about six months, when it was retaken for the Imperialists by the English and French war vessels, and since that time, like many other Chinese cities, has been labouring on peacefully in an effort to regain what it lost at the hands of the rebels and the Imperial troops.
It was daylight when we steamed up the Yang river ; and the harsh outlines of the islands and of Chin-hai promontory close by, were mellowed in the morning light. A great fleet of fishing-boats bound seaward contributed to enliven the scene ; and there were Fukien timber-junks, too, laden till they looked like floating wood-yards, and labouring their way up stream. One feature full of novelty was the endless array of ice-houses lining the banks of the river for miles and presenting the appearance of an encampment of troops. These ice-houses, or ice-pits, are thatched over with straw, and the ice is used to preserve fresh fish during the summer months.
There is a small foreign community on the banks of the Yang of difl*erent nationalities, including the missionary body. The native city is a walled enclosure, somewhat larger than that at Shanghai, and with nearly double its population ; but as for the foreign trade of the place, it has never been very important, in spite of the proximity of Hang-chow-fu, the capital of the province, which the great Venetian, when he passed through it, described as an Eastern Paradise.
Among the chief attractions of Ningpo are the Fukien guildhall, the " Tien-how-kung, " as it is called, or '* Temple of the Queen of Heaven"; one of the finest buildings of the kind in China. Indeed it is only the temples, the yamens and the houses of the rich — the latter, outside the official ranks, few and far be- tween when one considers the vastness of the population — that possess any noteworthy architectural features in the country. The comfortable, elegant and tasteful abodes of the middle classes, which adorn the suburbs round our cities at home, are conspic- uous by their absence in the " Flowery Land. " In this town I met the remnant of that " ever-victorious army " which achieved so many triumphs. Now, after much turmoil," these warriors rest from their labours, and form the Ningpo city guard, a small compact body of native troops under two English officers, well drilled, well cared for and well paid. This, I fear, is more than can be said of a large portion of the Chinese forces under arms. At any rate they are not all well, and but few of them regul- arly paid. Notwithstanding this the condition of the Chinese soldiers is perhaps better than it has been in former years ; and I believe that, were the Imperial Government obliged to make an effort, they might turn out an army better equipped than is generally supposed ; although at the same time any force the Chinese might thus muster would be wofuUy deficient in the discipline, organisation and science, required in coping with the machine- like masses that are placed upon the modern battle-fields of Europe. These are the impressions I gathered from actual obser- vation of bodies of men encamped and under review in China. I think that a Chinaman who has received an English education of a not very high-class sort, might try to put a letter together in pure EngUsh with just about as much success as his govern- ment, with the knowledge they at present possess of the science of modern warfare, to send a thoroughly efficient army to face foreign troops. I cannot indeed march a regiment of Chinese before my reader for review, but of their shortcomings in Eu- ropean literary composition I will give an actual sample. An Englishman had occasion to send a note to his doctor *s native assistant, and here, in facsimile, is the reply :
"Dear Sir, — I not know this things. Dr. — no came Thursday. More better you ask he supose you what Fashtion thing can tell me know I can send to you.
"Yours truly,
"HANG SIN."
Now in the foregoing we have a very fine specimen of the sort of results achieved by Chinamen who flatter themselves that they can write English. There are a tardily increasing num- ber of well-educated natives to whom this remark does not apply. They have learnt the letters, and something of the syntax and grammar, but not enough to be of value to them ; and so it is with the Chinese soldier of to-day. He possesses occasionally the right weapons, but he lacks the knowledge essential to make use of them effectively, and the perfect discipline which alone can unite him to his fellows on the field, as an important unit in a compact and well-organised mass.
On April 4th I left Ningpo for Snowy Valley, in a native boat which I hired to take me up stream to Kong-kai. It was close on midnight when we started from Ningpo wharf, and we hoped to reach Kong-kai village by about 9 or 10 a. m. next day. In the end we reached Kong-kai within the allotted time. My party consisted of my two China boys, and four Ningpo coolies engaged to transport my baggage to the hills. Our path lay across fields of bean and rape, now in full bloom and exhal- ing a delightful fragrance, which contrasted strikingly with the morning whiffs from the manure-bestrewed fields, which commonly salute the wanderer in China. Everything hereabouts shone with freshness and beauty, and it was evident that we must have landed in a real paradise of cultivation.
There lay the village in front of us, nestling cosily amid the trees! And as we marched along I pictured to myself a quiet, rustic hamlet, such as we encounter in our English counties. But notwithstanding the natural beauty of the situation, Kong-kai was disappointing. No perfume of rose or honeysuckle greeted us as we approached, no rustic cots, no healthy, blooming children, not even the fondly-expected sturdy villager were among what was to be seen here.
At this place we procured mountain-chairs for an eighteen miles' journey to the monastery of Tien-tang. The chair-bearers looked worn and feeble, but as I walked a good deal they were not over- fatigued. One or two of the hamlets which we passed on the road were much more attractive than Kong-kai ; and indeed the people seemed to improve in condition the further we advanced inland. Near the hills the women and children adorn their raven tresses with the bright flower of the azalea — a plant found in great profusion in the highlands of the locality. The halting-places were little wayside temples, and in one of these I met two old women, the priestesses of the shrine. Most hag- gard, ill-favoured crones were they, and it was with grave fore- bodings that I allowed them to prepare my repast.
The bearers rested as often as they possibly could, and spent their money and their leisure in gambling among themselves or with wayside hawkers. Some of the small temples hereabouts differed from any which I had seen in China, having their outer porches adorned with two or three well-modelled life-size figures in the costume which appeared to be that of the ancient lictors of the Ming dynasty. But the idols within were invariably the
WAYSIDE GAMBLING.
same, the ordinary Triad of the Buddhist mythology. Each shady nook about these shrines was the resort and at times the sleeping-place of wayfarers; and there too vendors of fruit and other provisions had set up their stalls, ready either to sell the traveller his daily food, or to gamble with him for it, if he preferred that plan. The wandering minstrel and the story-teller were not absent from the scene, beguiling the mid-day repast with quaint ballads or with some tale from the stores which the folklore of the country has to supply. At one of these halting-places, while the coolies were tossing dice with an aged hawker, a Chinese pedlar laid down his burden for a rest. He had been carrying two baskets slung on a pole, and from these there issued such an incessant pattering and ceaseless chirping, that my curiosity induced me to open one of them and have a look inside. There I found about a hundred fluffy little ducklings, all of an age, flapping their rudimentary wings and opening their capacious mouths, clamorous for food. They were of our friend's own hatching and but one or two days old. Hatching poultry by artificial heat has reached great perfection in China.
The plain which we were crossing was dotted with little grave-mounds crowned with shrubs. And here and there a farm-house could be seen peeping out amid the groves, or a haystack clinging round the trunk of a tree and propped six feet clear above the ground.
The ascent to the monastery of the *' Snowy Crevice" afforded a succession of the finest views to be met with in the province of Cheh-kiang. The azaleas, for which this place is celebrated, were now in full bloom, mantling the hills and valleys with rosy hues, and throwing out their blossoms in clusters of surprising brilliancy against the deep green foliage which bound the edges of the path. The mountains themselves were tossed in wild disorder, swelling into richly-wooded knolls, or rising in cliffs and beetling crags. As the day declined the hills seemed to melt and merge into the fiery clouds; deep shadows shot across the path, swallowing up the woody chasms and warning us that night was near at hand. Darkness had already set in before we arrived at our destination. "Spot", my dog, had proceeded on, and his appearance had brought out a venerable bonze, who, almost without question, suspended the evening reckoning of his sins on his rosary, and lit us to our quarters in a large block of buildings behind. The apartment assigned to us was a plastered, white-washed chamber built out of pine wood, and containing a magnificent hardwood bed. After intimating that foreign wine was much better than any of his country's liquors, our old guide took his leave. We were not long, however, in finding our way to the kitchen for ourselves, and there the boys kindled a fire, while 1 smoked with the monks. The monastery of the "Snowy Crevice" reposes far from the haunts of men and the tumult of cities, in a broad, fertile valley, part of the imperial patrimony upon which its members subsist. It has of course a miraculous history, and, like many similar establishments, is popularly supposed to be extremely ancient. One of the stories connected with the place is that, in 1264 A.D., the Emperor Li-tang dreamed a dream about the temple, and named it accordingly "The famous Hall of Dreams. " This formed one of the most important events in its annals, for the dream was followed by substantial gifts. There is another legend which tells us of an anchorite, and of an Emperor who essayed in vain to slay the Holy Man. At last the monarch fell down and worshipped the priest, for he had never before come across a being whom he could not slay. This Emperor was distinguished for his wise rule, and had just put a million of the common sort of his subjects to death; but he was, at that time, athirst for some victim of rarer eminence and sanctity than any of those whom he had already brought to their end. He died at last a pious priest, and left some suitable gifts behind him. Something like this is not unknown even at the present time. There are monks, I am told, in those places, who have passed their lives in crime, and who find it expedient to retire to these choice retreats (making them places of refuge, like the temples of the ancient Jews and Greeks) to die pleasantly chanting Omita-Foh! "
Such holy ones, rescued from the grasp of justice and the jaws of the pit, take good care, nevertheless, to live as long as they can. Some Buddhists are doubtless sincere, if judged by the laws of their own faith ; and many of them, whom I came across, I found hospitable and kind to strangers. They seldom failed, however, to let me know if the presents I chanced to give them were not quite equal to those which other visitors had bestowed.
Early next morning a mute and aged monk conducted me to view the *' Thousand- fathom Precipice." A heavy cloud was hanging like a pall over the scene as I followed the guide along a mountain path. At length we reached a summit that stood out bold and clear, though still wet with vapoury rain ; and there, in a small rest-house, perched upon one of the rocks, we sat down to listen to the roar of the fall and the foaming torrent beneath. The monk next led me to where, clinging to a tree, I could lean over the edge of the precipice and get a look right down into the abyss; but there was nothing to be made out save a sea of mist, through which the deafening roar of the waters could be heard as they leapt from rock to rock in their descent to the valley more than 1,000 feet below. The sun gradually shone out, and by its aid we descended to the foot of the fall through a steep shady path, and secured some pictures of the scenery. The cataract takes a leap of about 500 feet and then gushes downwards over the cliffs and edges like the graceful folds of a bridal veil; while the variously coloured rocks are covered with ferns and flowering shrubs.
It was interesting to watch the monks at their refections ; and this we contrived to do without being noticed ourselves. We found them as a rule particular in observing those rules of Buddhism, by which the external semblance of cleanliness is enforced. * The following are some of the laws which regulate diet: —
The dinner of a priest consists of seven measures of rice mixed with flour, the tenth of a cubit of pastry, and nearly the same weight of bread. To eat more is cupidity, to eat less is parsimony; to eat vegetables of any kind besides these dishes is not permitted. ' '
The last injunction is by no means commonly followed in China: —
" Then the priest shall off'er to the good and bad spirits, and repeat five prayers. He must not speak about his dinner, nor steal food like a dog, nor scratch his head, nor breathe in his neighbour's face, nor speak with his mouth full, nor laugh, nor joke, nor smack in eating; and if he should happen to find an insect in his food he must conceal it so as not to create doubt in the minds of others. "
There are a host of other very good rules laid down for his guidance ; but their general tendency when observed is to make a monk 's dinner a most solemn and most unsocial event. When we look through the Buddhist laws and precepts, we find them so minute and so wide-reaching, that they hedge the priest
- Laws and Regulations of the Priesthood of Buddha, in China. Trans,
by C. F. Newmann. completely around, shutting him out from the gratification of his most natural desires and rendering it indeed uncertain whether any perfectly devout and faithful Buddhists can possibly exist in China.
The return voyage to Ningpo and Shanghai I must pass by unrecorded, that I may hurry forward to describe my journey up the Yangtsze river to Sze-chuan.
Having dined with a literary friend in Shanghai, I returned to the hotel towards midnight and there found my boys with every- thing in readiness, and a gang of coolies waiting to bear our baggage on board the *'Fusiyama, " which was getting up steam for Hankow. It was a bitter night, and the scene was as dark and gloomy as the wind was cold. The lamps blinked and shiv- ered as the blast swept by. The bund was deserted ; only some stray woman would now and again emerge from the darkness, and then be swallowed up once more, like a sinful victim in the jaws of night. We soon passed on to the "Fusiyama," across the floating landing-stage alongside of which she was moored. She was a fine steamer, although by no means the finest among the S. S. N. Go's fleet.
Reserving what I may have to say about Nanking and the ports on the lower Yangtsze, I will transport the reader at once about 600 miles higher up — to Hankow, the furthest point on the Yangtsze river to which steam navigation had at that time been carried. Hankow holds an important position at the confluence of the rivers Han and Yangtsze. The ancient name of the Han river was the Mien, and its course, as well as the point at which it joins the Yangtsze, have been subjected to frequent change. It was only in the last decade of the fifteenth century that the river created its present channel, and at the same time the advantageous site, to which Hankow owes no little portion of her prosperity. The early trade of the district was confined to Hanyang, a place described as a flourishing port at the remote period treated of in the History of the Three States. " Hanyang is now chiefly taken up with official residences, though its suburbs are still the resort of a considerable native trade.
Hankow flourished under the rule of the Mings, and does not seem to have sufl*ered greatly during the disasters which attended their fall. It was then known as the great mart, in fact the commercial centre of the Empire, and was the resort of traders from the furthest north, and from the southernmost provinces Kiang-su and Yunan. Most of the provinces indeed were represented there by guilds, whose halls are still famous for their size and decoration. During Kien-loong's time the pros- perity of Hankow continued to advance until the disastrous epoch of the Taiping rebellion. Then the decay was as rapid as the ruin was complete; and finally, in 1855, the whole city was burned to the ground.
After the Taipings had been expelled from Hupeh, Hankow rose once more out of its ashes, and in 1861 the final arrange- ments for a concession of land to the British Crown were carried into effect. The hoisting of the English colours was follow- ed at once by a splendid settlement, erected on a very unfor- tunate site. The land was bought up in small lots at 2,500 taels each, and enormous sums were squandered before it was discovered that the spot chosen for a foreign settlement was exposed to constant inundations of the most destructive kind. Thus, in the year before my arrival, the flood, which is always looked forward to as the event of the season, bestowed its fertilising favours with no grudging hand; and indeed there was no foretelling to what height the waters, which had already swept away entire suburbs from the cities higher up stream, might deluge the vicinity of Hankow. Well, first of all, it rose slowly until it had submerged its banks ; thence it made excur- sions along the outlying streets ; crept up like a silent foe till it had breasted the fortifications ; and finally made the captured settlement over to a sort of watery sack. The inhabitants retreated to their garret fastnesses, while pigs, poultry, and even cattle were sheltered in boats, or found refuge in the bedrooms on the upper floors. At any rate it was a convenience to "Paterfamilias" to have his milk-cow next door to his nur- sery, and chanticleer perched upon a friendly bedpost to screech the approach of day. But when the novelty of these domestic arrangements had worn off, and when the richly-papered walls began to weep through a lacework of fungus, and the limbs of the polished furniture to show symptoms of dissolution; when silken hangings grew mildewed and pale, and the boundary walls tottered and sunk with a dull splash into the red stream, the insecurity of the position pressed heavily upon the despondent inhabitants. The halls and staircases became docks and landing- stages where visitors might disembark, and a dining or drawing- room made a much better plunge-bath than one could have imagined. Bachelors, too, while they indulged in a morning swim, could call at the bank to enquire the rate of exchange, or dive to their breakfast beneath the doorway of some hospit- able friend. At length the water reached its height; and then to the relief of all began slowly to recede. It is apprehended that but for a back wall (erected originally by the Chinese Government at a cost of ;^8o,ooo, as a protection against organ- ised raids from the banditti of the plain) which acted as a breakwater, the entire settlement might have been swept into the Yangtsze by the strong reflux currents from the Han. The business at Hankow has never come near the anticipations of the Europeans who flocked thither when the place was opened ; but, nevertheless, as the centre of the districts which produce the Congou teas, it must always secure a very important share of foreign commerce. The total value of the trade in foreign shipping was reported to be about 14,000,000 taels in 1871, while in 1873 it appears to have fallen off; but this was owing to a sort of commercial stagnation which has been felt all over China. In 1895 it stood at 44,507,502 taels.
The Taotai of Hankow, Ti-ming-chih, who furnished me with a passport for the upper Yangtsze, and whom I had twice the pleasure of meeting, had been born in the province ofKiangsu, and commenced his official career at the age of thirty, by an appointment to a modest clerkship. From this his abilities advanced him step by step, until he attained his present position, where he earned a high reputation by his just, mild and in- telligent rule.
Woochang city, on the opposite bank of the river presents a picturesque appearance, due partly to the elevated ground on which it stands and partly to its celebrated tower, which tradition reports to have been first set up there 1,300 years ago. This tower was overthrown by the followers of the " Heavenly King " during the Taiping rebellion, and after an interval of about fifteen years rebuilt and finished. It is quite unlike the ordinary Chinese pagoda, and from its peculiar design runs no risk of ever being mistaken for any other monument.
During the journey to the upper Yangtsze, which I now pro- pose to describe, I had two American gentlemen for my com- panions. Two native boats were secured, and we engaged them to carry us to Ichang. Into the smaller of these craft we stowed the cook and servants, reserving the larger one for our baggage and ourselves. Our boat was divided into three compartments with well-carved bulkheads between. The fore-cabin was taken up by a boy to wait on us, and by our newly-appointed Chinese secretary — Chang. This secretary was a small compact man, full of Chinese lore and self-satisfied complacency. The " central state" room was our own, while Captain Wang and his wife found shelter in the after-cabin. Besides this there was an ample hold, which contained our baggage, our provisions and our crew.
We left Hankow about mid-day, but as there was no wind, we had to pole our way through thousands of native boats, and anchor for the night at Ta-tuen-shan, only ten miles above the town. A hard frost set in during the evening, and it seemed quite impossible to keep the intense cold out of our quarters. To make matters worse, the skipper and his spouse smoked stale tobacco half through the night, and the fumes came through the bulkhead and filled my sleeping-bunk. Next day we set to work with paper and paste to cure both evils by patching up every crevice and by fixing up a stove which had been lent us by friends for the voyage. These preparations were a source of disquietude to Mrs. Wang, who turned out to be a tartar more desperate even than the lady of the Min.
The boatmen were a miserably poor lot. They neither changed their clothes nor washed their bodies during the entire trip: and "Why should they.?*" said Chang the secretary ; they could only change their garments with one another. They have but a single suit apiece, and that, too, some of them only loan for the winter months. Their clothes were padded with cotton and formed their habiliments by day and their bedding by night. Poor souls ! how they crept together, and huddled into the hold ! and what an odour arose from their retreat in the morning, for they had smoked themselves to sleep with tobacco, or those of them who could afford it, with opium. It was always a difficult matter to get them up and out on deck to face the cold. I confess I never cared to be the first to lift the hatch. But the voice of Mrs. Wang was equal to the occasion. She shook those sluggards from their rest with her strident tones; she stamped in her cabin and "slung slang" at them like the foulest missiles. At last, about seven o'clock, they might be seen unwillingly turning to and hauling up the anchor, not more slow-moving than themselves. As it happened, we had a fair wind and made a good day's run, but the iron stove seemed to be a failure, or at any rate our coal would not burn. It took us half a day of hard work to turn "Farmer's Bend," although one might easily walk across the neck of land which divides the two extremities of the curve, in a quarter of an hour. A canal cut across would be a great saving in the river navigation. We noticed many timber rafts from the Tung-Ting lake, looking like floating villages, and indeed they are neither more nor less than hamlets. Each on its substructure of timber supported two rows of huts, and in these dwelt the little colonies of Chinamen who had invested their time, labour and small capital in the trade. When the rafts reach Hankow, these huts are lifted off and placed on the river's bank; the owners residing inside them till all their wood has been disposed of. When steamers are seen thus far up the Yangtsze river (46 miles above Hankow) experienced pilots would be required, especially at this season when the water is at its lowest, and it might perhaps be necessary even, to survey the stream annually, for its channel tends constantly to shift. Steam navigation is now carried beyond — to Ichang, at the entrance to the Gorges of the upper Yangoge. At Paitsow, where we anchored for the night, we found men manufacturing bamboo cables. They had no rope-walks, but only high temporary-looking scaffoldings, with some men above
Our native house boat, Upper Yangtsze.
and others below, making and twisting the thick strands.
Next morning the skipper's wife and the crew got through a good deal of bad language between them before we made a start. The conversation was a shrill-toned one, and alternated between Mrs. Wang in her cabin at one end of the boat and the crew in the hold at the other. The latter objected to turn out until their captain was at his post. This difficulty the gentle wife settled ultimately by kicking her husband out of bed on to the deck, hurling torrents of abuse at his unhappy head and supplementing those delicate attentions by a plentiful supply of cooking utensils. Let the reader imagine himself afloat in such a vessel as 1 have described, with such a crew, on a river red like the soil through which it flows, and from half a mile to a league in breadth; let him conceive himself ascending the stream between low level monotonous clay walls; he will then have a picture of our craft and our surroundings for many days as we pursued our voyage up to the Gorges. We break- fasted and dined, anchored and slept, surveying the river as well as we could, and here and there marking out sundry sand- banks and other barriers to commerce, formed since the one and only chart of the river had been made.
We had chosen our opportunity well. There can be no better time for examining the features of a river than when it is at its lowest, and the Yangtsze was now running far below its banks, which in summer are completely submerged. But our careful soundings, our notes of bearings and our chart- projecting need find no record here. Their very sameness grew wearisome at last; but, as for our secretary, he would have been quite willing to sail on until he had digested the whole of the ancient classics, drinking our wine and smoking our cheroots as frequently as they were offered. He had marvellous raiment — Chang. A padded robe of classic cut, with sleeves reaching down to his knees, and a collar that stood up like a fortress, around his neck. When in a corner, seated at study, he looked like a huge bolster surmounted by a tiny cap. He would remain in this posture for hours, with his eyes closed, and audibly rehearsing whole books of classic lore ; but he had also a good deal of accurate information about the country, and was extremely polite in his manner, and willing to make him- self useful. It was a mistake having two boats; their unequal sailing powers caused grievous delay — delays which the servants and cook readily turned to account in explaining all sorts of shortcomings, and which contributed greatly to the leisure and enjoyment of the crews who were paid by the day. On the 23rd we passed the point where the Ta-Kiang — or great river — is joined by the stream from the Tung-Ting lake. At this place there were abundant evidences of considerable trade in the fleets of boats we continually passed. The river, in some of the long reaches hereabouts, would be dangerous for steam navigation, at any rate during the months when the banks are submerged. Hence suitable landmarks would have to be erected, as not a single tree, shrub, or knoll, can at such times be seen for many miles around. All the shoals at this (the winter) season are well defined, and, with the exception of two reefs of rocks which stand well clear of the water, consist of soft mud and sand, and occur just at bends, where anyone accustomed to river navigation would expect to find them. Wherever the current struck upon the clay, a good channel was almost invariably to be found.
On the 24th we ascended a small rapid which ran about five knots, and were detained by a snow-storm for about six hours. The little hamlets we passed, or anchored at, day after day, were temporary, miserable-looking settlements, conveying the idea of a thinly peopled country; and the inhabitants wore the poverty-stricken look only too common in other parts of China. We have walked over the country, and along the banks, for nearly half a day without encountering a single individual. At many places the river had undermined the banks, and these were falling in great blocks eight or ten feet wide; and there was one point where we noticed that the stream was cutting out the heart of an old settlement, for there were foundations of houses exposed, and many coffins protruding from the bank.
On the 27th we reached Shang~chai-wan, and remarked that the banks in front of an old pagoda there, had been carefully faced up with stones. Thus a useful sort of landmark was well protected from the inroads of the stream, while the houses were left to be swept away as the bank fell in.
This village indicated some slight degree of prosperity and presented a pretty winter's scene. There was no one astir, not a footprint stained the white mantle in which the soil was wrapt ; only on one level patch the leaves of a winter crop shot up in rows, and formed a pale green pattern on a snowy ground. A little further on was the town of Shang-chai-wan, where our boys went ashore and spent half a day in a vain search for coal. Then the crew had to be hunted up all over the place, and one by one the men dropped in, each with as much sam-shu as he could hold inside him, or else stupified with opium. Capt. Wang we found in a filthy alley, enjoying the nectar of a grog- shop, amid a group of natives who were civil enough. Few of them had ever set eyes upon a genuine white man before, and all made numerous good-natured enquiries about our relations and our clothes; one old man even suggested that our faces and hands had only acquired a pale colour through the use of some wonderful cosmetic, and that our bodies were black. I bared my arm to refute this calumny, and its white skin was touched by many a rough finger, and awoke universal admiration. Not knowing exactly what our barbarous views of decency might be, we were kindly recommended by an unwashed, but polished member of the community not to gratify vulgar curi- osity by stripping entirely, as we had already completely satisfied the more intelligent members of the crowd.
The reader can easily gather from such incidents as these what depraved notions some of the Chinese must entertain about ourselves and our customs. They always seem to feel that we have a great deal to learn ; the merest coolie, if he be a kindly- disposed person, will readily place his knowledge at our ser- vice and put us in the way of picking up something of Chinese civilisation. I have in my possession one of the valua- ble works upon which this popular belief is fed. It is a sort of ethnological treatise, written down to the limited comprehen- sion of facts and to the inordinate craving for fable which characterise the lower classes among this highly superstitious nation. The author gravely describes races of men, who, like ourselves, live on the outer edges of the world, that is outside the benign influence of Chinese rule. Some are very hairy men clothed with leaves; others hop about on^one leg; while others again are adorned with the claws of birds. There is one very singular tribe indeed. These have only a single huge eye in the forehead, while the women carry a multitude of breasts. There are men too with big holes through their bodies above the region of the hearty so that they may be spitted like herrings, or carried about on poles; and lastly there is one community more gifted still, for they can fly through the air with wings.
It was at this place that our writer Chang, who said he was suffering from cold, despatched one of the boatmen ashore to buy a bottle of sam-shu. The trust which he displayed in the integrity of the messenger was no less marvellous than touching.
- 'I do not know how much there is here," said he, as he
placed his purse in the boatman's hands; "but take what you require and put back the rest. " Just before, however, I had noticed the crafty rogue carefully count the cash in this very purse, which, as it turned out, contained no more than exactly sufficient for the purchase.
On the 29th, when passing a customs' station, we were pursued and overtaken by a fiery official, who came on board, received a cigar and a glass of wine and went away greatly impressed with our respectability. We also sailed by a large cotton-junk lying wrecked on the bank, and a second one which had run aground where the water was deeper, and whose owners were now living in a mud hole, waiting till the river should rise high enough to float their craft.
At Shi-show-hien we bought a quantity of fish; among them was one described by Captain Blakiston, which carries a sword above its wide toothless mouth. This sword it is said to use for boring into the soft mud to dislodge the tiny fish, which thereupon rush for shelter down its dark capacious throat. The stomach of the specimen we purchased, contained one or two of these half-digested mud-fish. Its colour, from the spine half-way down to the belly, was dark blue or slate ; the belly was white ; the tail and fins were white and red. Length from point of sword to tip of tail, 4 feet 2 inches; length of sword, 14 inches.
Shi-show-hien was formerly held by the Taiping rebels. Here they built a fortress, whose ruins may still be seen. We were now within sight of the hill ranges in the province of Hunan, and on one hill close at hand stood a temple called the Ti-tai-shan, which forms a striking land-mark for river navigation. The changes which have taken place since our Admiralty chart was laid down renders that map comparatively useless, both for this and other parts of the river, at any rate when the waters are low.
Shasze stands on the left bank of the Yangtsze river, which is here more than a mile and a half broad, with a deep roomy channel; and we may gather from the crowd of native shipping that lies anchored off the town or close to its fine stone embankment, that we have reached an important centre of trade. This embankment terminates at its upper end in a sort of bul- wark, crowned with the finest pagoda to be found anywhere along this river. Immense labour has been bestowed in fortifying this site against the undermining influence of the current; and the town is placed at such an angle on the stream, that the action of the water always keeps a clear channel close to its strong stone-retaining wall. Stone is freely used in this part of the upper Yangtsze, and is readily obtainable in unlimited supplies in the gorges above the town. At Shasze, landing- stages for steamers might be made at almost any part of the bank; while there are splendid sites for a foreign settlement on the hills across the stream.
Coal abounds in Hunan and Szechuan, and yet we found it difficult to procure. In the former province it is worked at two places only — Tsang-yang-hien and Pa-tung-hien, and there to an extremely limited degree ; but in Szechuan there is a good deal more coal-mining going on. The coal is of good quality, in every way suitable for steam purposes — at least the samples which we collected were excellent.
We arrived on February 3rd at the town of Kiang-kow. Here the men struck work, as they wished to go ashore for what they called rice, but which Chang interpreted as wine. We offered to supply them with rice; but that they would not accept, demanding an advance of money and leave of absence to spend it. This we steadfastly refused to concede, and threatened to cut off their captain's pay unless he brought his men to terms. The mutineers next hauled in the sails and sat themselves down for a smoke; but in about an hour, seeing no prospect of our yielding, the skipper consulted his sweet spouse, and then forthwith ordered the men to turn to, under penalty of letting the wife of his bosom loose on them. This prospect produced such a powerful effect on the men that they instantly resumed their work.
We were now fairly entering the mountainous region, and quitting the great alluvial plain that stretches hundreds of miles southward to the sea. We could just see the " Mountains of the Seven Gates" towering in dark masses above the horizon, as the evening closed in upon us and we cast anchor for the night. Our skipper determined to serve us out for our obstinacy. He assured us that the place was infested with pirates, and that it would be necessary to keep an armed watch all night. Perhaps he feared his men, who were certainly a dare-devil-looking set.
We noticed men fishing with trained otters on this part of the river. There were a number of boats, and each boat was furnished with an otter tied to a cord. The animal was thrust into the water and remained there until it had secured a fish; then it was hauled up, and the fisherman, placing his foot upon its tail, stamped vigorously until it had dropped its finny prey. We passed two prosperous-looking little towns, Po-yang and Chi-kiang; and on the morning of February 5th were sailing be- neath bold rocky bluffs backed by a chaos of fantastic mountain peaks. Here, on the highest pinnacle, a Buddhist monastery was perched, not far from the brink of the river. It was fronted by a precipice of 600 feet, and looked quite inaccessible at its altitude of more than 1,200 feet above the stream. But after all, to scale this stony height and to rear a shrine amid the clouds, although a wonderful achievement in its way, sinks into insignificance when compared with the task of self-subjection daily set before each inmate of the cloister, who, even in such a retreat as this, removed as far as it well can be from the haunts of men, finds the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life too strong to be effectually subdued. Many of the Buddhist monastic establishments in China, as we have already seen, are planted in most romantic and lovely spots ; and in the one now before us we found no exception to the rule.
On the same day, at noon or a little after, we anchored at Ichang. This city is one of considerable commercial importance, and as it stands at the entrance of the Gorges, it is the highest point to which steam navigation can be carried until these rocky defiles, which extend for upwards of 100 miles beyond it, shall have been thoroughly surveyed, and some obstacles removed, which render the navigation there by far the most dangerous on the rivers of China. Ichang is now open to foreign trade, and is the present limit of steam navigation on the river. I must here refer the reader to the Imperial Maritime Customs' Reports for 1895, for information regarding the trade of Ichang. At present, foreign goods are distributed from this port through the surrounding provinces, while the rich plains of Hupeh, besides the usual cereal crops— beans, millet, rice and rape — produce yellow silk, tung-oil and opium; the latter in small quantities, although it is raised more plentifully in Szechuan and Yunnan.
The town of Ichang sweeps in a crescent-shape round a bend on the left bank of the river, and is divided into two halves by a canal. The one half occupies high land, while the other is on lower ground, and comprises a large suburb which suffered severely in the flood of 1870, but has since been rebuilt. In the afternoon we were the spectators of a naval review. Six small gun-boats, each mounting a six-pound gun at the bow, were drawn up in line and fired their cannon at irregular inter- vals. I say irregular, because some of the artillery refused to go off at all; and when the sham fight was all over, we could hear them discharging themselves during the night. The boats were small, and had each about forty rowers on board. When the review was over, the admiral landed and rode off on a gaily-caparisoned pony, followed by his retainers.
At Ichang we had to hire a large rapid-boat to make the ascent of the Gorges, and we left our sailing vessels to await our return. Before we started a cock was sacrificed to the river goddess ; its blood and feathers were sprinkled on the bow, while a libation was poured upon the water. We had a crew of twenty-four men at the sweeps, who worked to the tune of a shrill piping song, or rather yell, and under their exertions it was not long before Ichang had been passed and the mouth of the first gorge was before us. Here the river narrows from half a mile to a few hundred yards across, and pours through the rocky defile with a velocity that makes it difficult to enter. The hills rose on each side from 500 to 2,500 feet in height, presenting two irregular stone walls to the river, each worn and furrowed with the floods of ages, and showing some well-defined water-markings 100 feet above the winter stream, up which we were now toiling on our way. The further we entered the gorges the more desolate and dark became the scene; the narrow barren defile presenting a striking contrast to the wide cultivated plains through which we had been making our way from the sea, for more then 1,000 miles. The only inhabitants of this region appeared to be a few fishermen, who prosecuted their avocation among the rocks ; while their rude huts could be seen perched high in inaccessible- looking nooks and crannies among the mountains above. Huts, indeed, they could hardly be called ; at least those of them which we visited were either natural caves, or holes scooped out beneath the sheltering rocks, and closed in with what resembled the front of an ordinary straw-thatched cottage.
These smoke-begrimed abodes called to my mind the ancient cave-dwellings which sheltered our forefathers at Wemyss Bay in Scotland. The interiors were dark and gloomy, the clay floors cold and covered with fishbones and refuse, while a dull light glimmering from a taper in a recess in the rocks, revealed at once the grim features of a small idol and the few and simple articles of furniture that made up the property of the inmates. A residence of this sort, with all it contains, might be fitted up at an original cost of probably one pound sterling; and yet it was in such places that we found the frugality and industry of the Chinese most conspicuously displayed; for out- side the caves, wherever there was a little soil on the face of the rocks, it had been scraped together and planted with vege- tables, which were made to contribute to the domestic economy of the inhabitants. This was indeed taking bread out of a stone! Further on we found a number of men engaged in quarrying the stone, and in forming river embankments. The stream in many places hereabouts had undermined the limestone formation of the rocks, so that the softer portions had been washed away, and a series of grotesque flint pillars were left, supporting the upper strata which towered above our heads in precipices of a thousand feet. In other places the rocks looked
like the high walls and ramparts of a fortress, or the battlements
Our native house boat, Upper Yangtsze.
and towers of a citadel. The inhabitants of this sterile
region must have a severe struggle for existence, but they are a hardy and independent race, scorning the mendicant tricks of their more abject fellow-countrymen in the plains. Thus I only fell in with a single beggar in these mountain passes. Our men slept on deck in the open air, and I was always afraid lest I should find some of them dead in the morning, for the cold was intense during the night. But they huddled themselves together beneath the awning of matting, and thus managed to keep the night air from freezing their blood. Near the upper end of the gorge the huts were of a better class ; the soil improved and small orchards came into sight, displaying a profusion of plum-blossoms even at this season of the year.
We were compelled to spend half a day at a place called Kwang-loong-Miau, that the crew might celebrate the Chinese New Year. The festival was conducted at the village shrine, which stood on a picturesque spot surrounded with pine and backed by a mountain 2,000 feet high. Chang had here a dispute with the boatmen, who, as he protested, had sullied his honourable name. He complained of their riotous, drunken conduct; but I soon found that our venerated inter- preter was himself not without sin, and was indeed unable to stand erect. He suggested that the chief offenders ought to be taken before the nearest magistrate.
In truth they made a great uproar during the night, firing crackers, quarreUing, and gambling; but next morning they were once more ready for work, though some of them had sold a portion of what little they had in the shape of clothing, to give the new year a fair start, and looked all the more savage for the change. They soon got heated, as we had cleared the first gorge and were now ascending a rapid. It was the first, but by no means the least dangerous. The bulk of the men were on the bank, attached to a tracking line. Off they sped, yelling like fiends above the roar of the water ; while the boy, to add to the din, lustily beat a gong, and the cook a small drum, for the purpose of stirring the men to put forth their full strength. At about the centre of the rapid there was a dead halt, as if the boat had stuck fast on a reef, though the trackers were straining to their utmost with hands and feet planted firmly on the rocks. The skipper stamped, danced and bellowed to his crew; and they, responding with a wild shout, a desperate tug and a strain, at last launched our boat into the smooth water above. The danger of this rapid consists not so much in its force as in the narrowness of the channel, and in the multitude of rocks, sunken as well as above the water, on which the boat, were the tracking line to part, would cer- tainly drift, and there be dashed to pieces.
In the second, or Lukan Gorge, the mountains rise to a greater altitude, projecting in some places over the chasm as if to join and exclude the light from the already darkened river. There were numerous strange perpendicular markings in these rocks, like borings for the purpose of mining. These had appar- ently been made by a sort of natural sand-drill. Small hard pebbles imprisoned in the recesses of soft rock, with the aid of sand and water, have in time pierced these deep vertical shafts, and the attrition of the water on the face of the rocks has at last brought the tunnelled apertures to light.
At the next rapid, Shan-tow-pien, we noticed the wrecks of two Szechuan trading-boats, making in all nine which we had come across since we started from Ichang. It was snowing heavily as we made our way over the rocks to the village, which
came down close to the water's edge; and towards dark we
Mountain Scene, Province of Hupeh.
found ourselves in front of a small cabin made out of the debris of a wrecked boat. The owner of the wreck, an aged man, resided within, and had been residing there for some days past. He looked cold and wretched, but he would have nothing to say to us and haughtily rejected our proffered help.
We had now reached the great rapid of the Upper Yangtsze, which occurs at the mouth of the Mitan Gorge. Here, while I was engaged in photographing the scene, I fell in with a mandarin, who asked many questions about my honourable name and title, my country, my kinsmen, and as he had never set eyes on a photographic instrument before, he wanted to see the result of my work. When the picture was shown to him, he enquired by what possible means a drawing could be so perfectly completed in so short a space of time; and then, without waiting for an answer, and casting an anxious glance at me to make sure I had neither horns, hoofs, nor tail visible, he hurried off to the village, with the conviction that my art was an uncanny one, and that my diabolical insignia were only craftily concealed.
Accordingly, on taking my next view at the same village, I was surrounded by a crowd of sullen spectators who, though it was explained that I was only securing a picture, favoured me with sundry tokens of their dread in the shape of sods and stones. Chang tried his eloquence on the people, but with little effect. We packed up as quickly as possible and marched down the bank to cross over to the other side, where my companions were preparing for the ascent of the rapid. No doubt these villagers, some of them, had heard the popular fiction that pictures such as mine were made out of the eyes of Chinese babes. I narrowly escaped a stroke from an oar as I took refuge in a boat; but the blow was warded off with a force that sent its author spinning headlong into the stream, from which he emerged below the rapid, a good deal shaken and bruised, but with no serious injury.
This rapid is one of the grandest spectacles in the whole panorama of the river. The water presents a smooth surface as it emerges from the pass ; then suddenly seems to bend like a polished cylinder of glass; falls eight or ten feet, and finally curves upwards in a crest of foam as it surges away in wild tumult down the gorge. At this season sundry rocks enhance the peril of shooting the rapid. On our way down we persuaded Chang to come in the boat with us; but as the vessel plunged and groaned in an agony of straining timbers, he became per- fectly sick with panic fear. It was indeed hardly to be wondered at. The pilot we employed at this time was a tall bony man with dark piercing eyes, a huge black moustache and a mouth full of protruding teeth. He and his assistant guided the boat to what seemed the worst part of the rapid, and then launched her into the raging waters broadside on. After the first plunge she swept round, bow foremost, tossing and writhing until I thought she would go to pieces and disappear. Meanwhile the pilot, flinging his arms on high, shouted and danced about the deck, conveying the notion that the craft was doomed, although in reaUty he was only guiding his men at the helm. But the boat, regardless of oaths, oars and rudder, sped forward with a fearful impetus, bearing right down for the rocks, dodged them at the last moment, and then darted into comparatively smooth water far below. The pilot's buffoonery is probably part of his game. It pays when at last he presents himself for his legiti- mate fee, and for the trifle extra which he expects for saving our lives at the risk of his own. That there is great danger
in shooting this rapid may be gathered from a survey of the
NEAR THE MITAN GORGE, UPPER YANGTSZE.
wrecks that strew the shore, from the Ufe-boats in constant
attendance, or from the fact that the Chinese unload their boats at the head of the rapid, and have their cargo and themselves transported overland to the smooth waters below.
This Tsing-tan rapid, then, is the greatest obstacle to the steam navigation of the Upper Yangtsze. We had to hire fifty trackers from the village to aid our men in hauling the boat up the stream, which here ran about eight knots an hour; but I see no reason why the kind of steamer Captain Blakiston has suggested should not navigate this, and indeed any of the other rapids on the river, the steam power to be capable of either towing the vessel up, or retarding her swift and hazardous descent. Were the river once opened to steam, daring and scientific skill would be forthcoming to accomplish the end in view.
The mountains of this gorge are on the same stupendous scale as those of the Lukan passage below. On the nth we reached a small walled town called Kwei, with not a single craft nor a human being near it to betoken trade of any kind. Here we halted for the night, and in the morning visited some coal mines at a place called Patung, where the limestone strata in which the coal is formed, stand up in nearly perpendicular walls against the edge of the river. Adits had been carried into the face of the rock, but they were all of them on an exceedingly small scale — simple burrowings without any depth. No shafts were sunk, and no ventilation was attempted. Coal abounds, and even with such rude appliances as the miners possess, is turned out in considerable quantities; but the quality is not so good as some we got further up the gorge. The miner when at work, carries a lamp stuck in his cap, much the same as those in use with us before Sir H. Davy's invention. The coal was shunted from the mouth of the pit down a groove cut in the face of the cHffs, and when conveyed any distance is trans- ported in kreels on the backs of women. There were several mining villages at this place ; and there every household is employed entirely in the trade, the children making fuel by mixing the coal with water and clay, and then casting it in moulds into blocks which weigh one catty (1Y3 lb.) apiece. The miners who are occupied in this work earn about seven shillings a week, and their hours of labour are from seven o'clock in the morning to about 4 p.m.
Baron von Richthofen has assured us that there is plenty of coal in Hunan and Hupeh, and that the coal-field of Szechuan is also of enormous area. He adds that at the present rate of consumption the world could draw its supplies from Southern Shensi alone for over a thousand years ; and yet, in the very places referred to, it is not uncommon to find the Chinese storing up wood and millet-stalks for their firing in winter, while coal in untold quantities lies ready for use beneath their feet. These vast coal-fields will constitute the basis of China's future greatness, when science shall have been called in to aid in the development of her enormous mineral wealth.
Wu-shan Gorge which we reached on the morning of the 1 8th, is more than twenty miles long, and we entered this great defile about ten o'clock. The river was perfectly placid; and the view at the mouth of the gorge was one of the finest we had hitherto encountered. The mountains rose in confused mas- ses to a great altitude ; the most distant peak at the extremity of the passage, resembling a cut sapphire, with snow-lines that sparkled in the sun like the gleams of light on the facets of a
gem, while the cliflfs and precipices gradually deepened in outline
Mountain Scene, Szechuan.
until they reached the bold lights and shadows of the rocky
foreground.
The officers of a gunboat stationed at the boundary which parts the provinces of Hupeh and Szechuan, warned us to be- ware of pirates, and they had good reason for so doing. We came to anchor at a place where the rocks, towering overhead, wrapped the scene in darkness; and it was nearly 10 p.m. when our skipper sent to say we had better have our arms ready, as pirates were prowling about. One boat had just passed noise- lessly up alongside, and its occupants were talking in whispers. We hailed them, but they made no reply, so then we fired over their heads. Our fire was responded to by a flash and a report from some men on the bank not far off. After this we kept a watch all night, and at about two in the morning were all roused again to challenge a boat's crew that was noiselessly stealing down on our quarters. A second time we were forced to fire, and the sharp ping of the rifle-ball on the rocks had the effect of deterring further advances from our invisible foes. The disturbers of our repose must have been thoroughly acquaint- ed with this part of the river, for even by day it is somewhat dark, and at night it is so utterly without light that no trading- boat would venture an inch from her rock-bound moorings. On another night in this gorge, I was summoned by my boy, who appeared in the cabin with a face of blank terror, and told me that he had just seen a group of luminous spirits that were haunting the pass. It was evident that something unusual had occurred, as I had never before seen the boy in such a state of clammy fear; so we followed him on to the deck, and looking up the precipice, about eight hundred feet above our heads, we then saw three lights on the face of the rock, performing a series of the most extraordinary evolutions. My old attendant declared, the cold perspiration trickling down his face the while, that he could make out sylph-like forms waving the lights to warn wayfarers off the edge of the abyss :
" This seraph band, each waved his hand,
It was a heavenly sight: They stood as signals to the land,
Each one a lovely light."
The true explanation of the phenomenon lay in the fact, perhaps, that in this very gorge there are hapless beings, con- victs, immured in prison-cells cut in the face of the rocks, into which they are dropped by their gaolers above, and from which they can never hope to escape unless to seek destruction by a plunge into the river below. Here, too, we find inhabitants of a widely different stamp, a number of philosophic followers of Laou-tsoo, who pass their lives as hermits in these dark solitudes. In one cave we came across the remains of a Taouist philo- sopher of this sort; a recluse who expired, so it was said, at the ripe age of 200 years. Several of the boatmen averred that they knew him to have been more than a century old. His relics lay in the centre of the cave, covered over with a cairn of stones and sods, which had been thrown up by passing mountaineers.
February 15. — To-day we met with a disaster as we were ascending a rapid. The boat was caught by a blast of wind, and this, aided by a strong eddy, was just sending her over, when the skipper's mate, the most active youth on board, sprang forward and cut the tracking line. The trackers unexpectedly relieved of the great strain, were sent sprawling over the rocks ; while as for the boat, she righted at once and then drifted down the rapid, till at last she settled on a spit of sand half a mile below the scene of the accident. So far the result was satisfactory; but then we were on one side of the stream and our crew on the other. As there was a village near at hand, we at once repaired thither to engage a boat to convey our men across ; but not a soul would stir unless we paid them beforehand nearly as much as would buy another village, such as it was. We offered them what the boatmen considered a fair hire, but this they stedfastly refused; until at last we jumped into one of their boats, and threatened to use it ourselves. Seeing this, they thought better of it, apologised and struck a fair bargain. We came to, for that night, above the Wu-shan Gorge. Before us, on the left bank, lay the walled town of Wu-shan, surrounded by low hills and richly-tilled valleys; and here we noticed the outlet of a small river that joins the Yangtsze, and down which salt is brought in great quantities from mines at a place called Ta-ning.
Opium, silk and tea are among the chief products of this district, and it is also singularly rich in fruits of various sorts. We bought the most delicious oranges I ever tasted in China, for a shilling a hundred. Next day we made a strenuous though futile effort to reach Kwei-chow-fu ; but we could make no headway in the face of a storm that swept in fearful blasts down the gorge and filled the air with a fine blinding sand, most irritating to the eyes. We therefore left Szechuan on the 1 6th, after having ascended a distance of over thirteen hundred miles above Shanghai. The return voyage was comparatively easy, and eighteen days after leaving Szechuan we again set foot on the foreign settlement at Hankow. Here our friends received us with a hearty welcome, and plied us with the most minute enquiries as to the state of the river and the exact appearance of the proposed new treaty-port at Ichang.
At Hankow I rejoined some of my oldest friends in China, and it was not without a pang of sincere regret at parting from them that I stepped on board the steamer.
I stopped at Kiukiang on the downward trip, and spent two or three days in the settlement. The native city, although it holds an important position near the mouth of the Po-yung lake, and thus communicates with the network of canals and streams that form the trade routes into the vast green-tea fields of Kiangsi and Ngan-Hwei, has nevertheless failed to attain a high commercial position; nor has the foreign settlement either, done much yet towards monopolising the traffic of the richly produc- tive districts by which it is surrounded. The city, which suffered a severe blow at the hands of the rebels who left it a ruined waste in 1861, had not, even at the time of my visit, regained its former prosperity.
Kiukiang will probably rise into much greater commercial importance when the Po-yung lake shall have been thrown open to steam navigation. One or two excursions which I made into the surrounding districts, enabled me to form a very favourable estimate of the fertility of the soil and the prosperity of the cultivators. The region, however, seemed thinly populated, and this fact alone is sufficient to account for the absence of the poverty and misery which fall to the lot of the toiling millions in many quarters of the land.
At a place called Tai-ping-kung, about ten miles inland from Kiukiang, I found the ruins of an ancient shrine, presenting most remarkable architectural features. All that remained of a once extensive edifice were two towers pierced with windows, which looked something like the pointed gothic apertures of a medieval European building. The walls of a small joss-house adjoining were built partly of finely sculptured stones; and the whole ruin, indeed, was unlike anything I had before seen in China. It seemed more European than Chinese, and possibly may point to Ricci's Jesuit mission to that part of the province in 1 590. It is, however, said to have once been one of the greatest Buddhist establishments in Cathay. On the way back from this old shrine I passed over classic ground, where the rocks are in- scribed with the praises of Chu-fu-tze, a celebrated Confucian commentator and philosopher who lived in the twelfth century.
The next point at which I touched was Nanking, the ancient capital of China, where there was no foreign settlement, nor any port open for trade. It was dark when, with my boys and baggage and two Chinese officers of the Governor-General's household, I descended from the steamer '^Hirado" into a native boat, and landed on the muddy bank beneath the outer walls of this famous city. We had to spend the night in a small shed which had been provided for the convenience of passengers making use of the river steamers. The place was crowded with an orderly company of natives, who very kindly made room for me to repose myself on a table; but it was in vain that I courted sleep, for the air was obscured by clouds of tobacco-smoke, and conversation was kept up with an incessant clamour all night through. As it happened the talk was of the deepest interest; Tseng-kuo-fan, the Chinese general who had fought side by side with Li-hung-chang and Colonel Gordon in the suppression of the Taiping rebellion, had just expired at his palace in Nanking. Many present said that he had perished by his own hand, or had succumbed to an overdose of gold- leaf; whereas the truth was, as I afterwards discovered, that he had died in a fit of apoplexy, the second with which he had been attacked. His death was a great disappointment to me, as my chief motive in visiting Nanking had been to see the celebrated leader, and, if possible, obtain his likeness for my larger work. I carried with me an introduction to him from Li-hung-chang the Governor-General of Pei-chil-U, and this note I duly presented to his son, who sent me a reply expressing the deep regret of the family that they should have missed the opportunity of obtaining a portrait. But a general officer subse- quently remarked that after all it was perhaps as well for me that I not arrived in time to take the picture, as most assuredly the speaker himself, and others as well as he, would have accused me of causing the untimely death. It is a wide-spread Chinese belief, from which men of intelligence are by no means free, that in taking a photograph, a certain portion of the vital prin- ciple is extracted from the body of the sitter, and that thus his decease within a limited period is rendered an absolute certainty.
The reader will gather from this that I was frequently looked upon as a forerunner of death, as a sort of Nemesis in fact; and I have seen unfortunates, stricken with superstitious dread, fall down on bended knees and beseech me not to take their likeness or their life with the fatal lens of my camera. But all this might have occurred in our own country not many years ago, where a photograph would have been esteemed a work of the devil.
Tseng-kuo-fan was one of the ^foremost statesmen of his time. He was a member of the Grand Secretariat, and was created a noble of the second class after the expulsion of the rebels from Nanking. He was then at the zenith of his power, and it was even said that his wide-spread influence was dreaded by the court at Peking. In 1868 he became Governor-General of Pei-chil-li, and was removed from that office after the Tientsin massacre, and for the third time appointed Governor-General of the two Kiang.
The view of Nanking was a disappointing one. It is simply a vast area enclosed within a high wall which makes a circuit of twenty-two miles, and is therefore the largest city in the kingdom. Near at hand are several heights crowned with tem- ples, and such-like sacred buildings ; while a number of yamens and religious edifices may be seen dotting the great open spaces where cultivation is carried on. But the city itself, as usual, is crowded into the narrowest limits, capable of supporting half a million struggling sons of Han. There were still many dreary acres of demolished streets with not a single occupant, but in other quarters the work of restoration was being actively carried on. This great Southern Capital" must probably have been at one time what Le Comte stated, "a splendid city surrounded by walls, one within the other, " the outermost, sixteen long leagues round." Such may have been its condition some fourteen hundred years ago, when it first became the Imperial head-quarters, or perhaps even so late as the fourteenth century, when Hung-Woo, the first Ming Emperor, is reported to have restored it to its pristine glory. But the place had already fallen sadly off at the advent of the Tien-wang, who conferred upon it the honour of making it the capital of a Chinese dynasty once more. It was said to have been at the recommendation of a very humble follower, an old sailor, that the *' Heavenly King," as he styled himself, decided on making Nanking the seat of his celestial government; but in other matters this self-made potentate was not so easily pursuaded. Why should he have been ? He professed to believe implicitly that he was a second son of God, sent down to redeem China. When the Imperialists were marshalling their forces around the great Ming tomb, and when his old soldiers and faithful adherents were starving in the streets, he gave orders that they should be fed on dew, and sing a new song till the hour of deliverance came. Calmly he sat within his palace, looking with disdain upon the gathering forces that ere long were to strike the fatal blow. The city had not yet fallen into the hands of his foes, when his faith and fortitude forsook him, and he ended his days by his own hand.
It is a tedious journey round the city moat to the southern gate. Many boats were to be met winding their way along this canal, or else drawn up into groups and forming little market- places every here and there. At one small bridge beneath which we passed, it was told me that there, after the fall of Nanking, the canal had been dammed up by rebel heads. Outside the southern gate there is a large suburb. Why it should have been planted there, when there is so much vacant space within the walls, is difficult to tell. Many of its dwellings are nothing more than rude huts, erected over ground strewn with the graves and bones of Taipings and Imperialists mingled together in kindred dust. Here, too, I found the old porcelain tower of Nanking (once one of the seven wonders of the world, but now levelled to the earth) ; and a number of small speculators driving a trade in its porcelain bricks. But most of the bricks of this tower and of the " Monastery of Gratitude " to which it belonged, were used in constructing the Nanking arsenal close by ; and of the two edifices I should say that the latter, planted as it had been by Li-hung-chang, in the very heart of the Central Flowery Land," will be held to be far the more wonderful structure of the two. Here, then, the old Buddhist tower and the monastery with its monotonous chants, have been replaced by a temple dedicated to the Chinese Vulcan and Mars, whose altars are furnaces, whose worshippers are melters of iron, and from whose shrines come the never-ceasing rattle of machinery and the reports of rifles that are being tested for service. This arsenal, built as I have said, under the auspices of Li- hung-chang, was the first of its kind in China, and is conducted on the most advanced scientific principles under the superinten- dence of Dr. Macartney, now Sir H. Macartney. It is, indeed, a startling innovation on the old style of things. If the Chinese first taught us the use of guns (They are said to have employed them in 1232 at the siege of Khai-fung-fu), we are certainly repaying the obligation [with interest by instructing them how our deadliest weapons are to be made. In this arsenal some hundreds of tonsTJof guns and ammunition are manufactured every year, and I have no doubt its products have already proved of service in the suppression of the Mahometan outbreak in the provinces of Kiangsu and Shensi. Here the Chinese can turn out heavy guns for battery-trains, or field-artillery, howitzers, gatling-guns, torpedoes, rockets, shot, shell, cartridges and caps. The rocket factory stands on an open plot of ground some distance from the main building, and [this place is appropriated to the filling of rockets and shells with their explosive contents. With respect to these arsenals and their high state of efficiency, I have one further remark to offer — and that is, that were the strict foreign management under which they^^have matured to be withdrawn, they could not be carried on so as to be of the slightest effectual service. Probably the same amount of money would be spent on their maintenance, but it would be subjected to a process of official filtration which would admit of nothing more than the purchase of inferior materials and the employment of underpaid labourers. An experiment of this sort was once tried, to humour an officer who boasted himself able to produce everything in the shape of modern warlike inventions as perfectly as any foreigner in the Empire. But the attempt was not repeated, as the shells he manufactured turned out much more deadly projectiles in the hands of his own men than they could ever have proved in the ranks of an enemy. They were badly cast with coarse iron, and their dangerous imperfections were filled up with black-leaded clay. So my humble opinion is that before the Chinese can hope to take a position among the civilised Powers of the world, they must acquire something of simple honesty, and unlearn much of the science of deception by which they study to enrich themselves, while making ready to conquer their foes.
Kin-Shan " or " Golden Island," " Silver Island," and the mouth of the Grand Canal were the last objects of interest I saw on the Yangtsze river. The Grand Canal may be set down as the greatest public work of the race who wasted years of needless labour in constructing the Great Wall to shut out the barbarous hordes, who, after all, are masters of the Empire. But this huge artificial waterway is now useless in many places, and utterly broken down ; although it might have proved of incalcul- able service in draining off the great waters of the Yellow River, which have, from time to time, spread their desolating floods over the vast productive plains of the interior.