§4 WITH BOAT AND GUN IN THE YANGTZE VALLEY. 



Note. — Expert opinion seems largely to incline in favour of the bluff and spoon -bowed houseboats, but 

 it has yet to be shown that they are more comfortable or faster under either sail or yuloh than the sharp-bowed 

 craft. That square bowed boats are at a sad discount when called upon to negotiate some of the open reaches of 

 the Whangpoo, when it may happen that both wind and tide may be against them, is a fact only too well known 

 to those who have had any experience of them. Take for instance the well known seven-mile reach from Sakong 

 to within a couple of miles of the Loongwha Pagoda, with a fresh north-westerly breeze blowing. As often as 

 not the square-bowed boat has to come to an anchor on entering the reach, but should the attempt be determined 

 on to yuloh homewards under the lee of the left bank of the river, again and again does it happen that the refuge 

 of the Tokaong (^ ^ ft) Creek has to be sought until the abatement of the blow, and this is ofl^n a matter of 

 12 hours or more. While such craft as the clipper bowed Whaup, Brema, Pearl, Ptarmigan or Woodcock can tack 

 down the reach in comfort, the square-nosed boat is undergoing all the miseries of a really bad time and great 

 delay. 



Mr. Ashley, who has now been dead some years, was in his time par excellence a " handy man." There 

 was not a matter connected with houseboats on which he was not an adept, and the willingness with which he 

 obliged all thase who consulted him made it a real pleasure to place oneself under an obligation to him. 



