194 WITH BOAT AND GUN IN THE YANGTZE VALLEY. 



weather be propitious and the birds found lying out, the cover is too dense for securing a bag. 

 The north bank is all cultivation, with a range of barren, rocky hills in the background. 



The cultivated islands with patches of reed fringing the river bank carry a fair 

 number of pheasants and river-deer all the way up this reach; and the game is much more 

 accessible on the islands than in the wild cover on the mainland. 



Turning into the Williamette "Cut Off" a low range of hills, covered with dwarf oak 

 scrub and fir woods, extend the whole length of this waterway, and this is about the best 

 known shooting ground between Wuhu and Ngankin, harbouring as it does most kinds of 

 game birds, hares, wildfowl, deer and the antelope (six-nostril deer or muntjac ?). At the 

 upper end, where the Yangtze again joins the " cut-off " at Perkins Point, is an old walled 

 city, Kuchen, standing about a mile back from the river. The city walls both inside and 

 out are densely covered with short bamboo thickets giving the securest cover to numberless 

 coveys of bamboo partridges. 



The 8 miles hence to Tatung are known as " Wild-boar Reach," so-called because an 

 early navigator saw what he affirmed were wild-boar swimming across the river — perhaps 

 there were. They were a good lot those ancient mariners on the Yangtze, and they are 

 still, but they see "funny things when they have not got their guns." One who still 

 "braves the perils" of the Yangtze lost half-a-day in making a chart showing a hitherto 

 unknown sandbank, and sent a boat out to take soundings, but the bank rose into the air 

 a flock of wildfowl! and on the return of the boat immense numbers of pig were reported 

 to have been seen in the evening at dusk coming down to feed, but they were said to be so 

 large and ferocious that the writer was recommended not to attempt their pursuit unless 

 accompanied by about eight native " shikaries " and a weapon of about the capacity and 

 penetration of an ordinary thirty-ton gun. If one solitary animal could have been isolated 

 from the herd it might, perhaps, have been possible to have grassed him, but the pig went 

 about in such numbers that even the natives were afraid of them and quietly submitted to 

 the wholesale destruction of their spring crops. One or two parties who have visited the 

 mines in this neighbourhood in recent year& corroborate the statements of the natives, but 

 as for themselves they did not meet with any pig ; so doubtless these immense herds are 

 still "at large." Judging from the quantity of game sent on board the river steamers at 

 Tatung, it must be plentiful at some short distance inland ; but there are no creeks penetrating 

 to the rear of the hills until the lower end of Bitzroy Island is reached. 



The creek here runs from a large lake on the other side of which is rolling hilly 

 country, here and there thickly covered with bamboo copse and oak scrub ; where there is 

 cultivation and the cover is not too dense one may "happen " on a fair number of pheasants, 

 but the country is sadly overrun with natives shooting for the local markets. 



From Tatung to Hen Point the country is a cultivated plain, dotted here and there 

 with low ranges of hills on which game certainly may be found. At Hen Point the river 

 bends sharply round to the east and is joined by the low ranges of hills which run through 

 the Tungliu country right up to the entrance of the Poyang Lake. There is shooting at the 

 foot of these hills, and a good sprinkling of woodcocks in the copses. 



At the back of Tatung are several high ranges of densely covered hills suggestive of 

 game. On one of these is a coal mine which the Chinese attempted to work a few years 

 back with foreign assistance, but this enterprise is reported to be now abandoned. 



