260 WITH BOAT AND GUN IN THE YANGTZE VALLEY. 



further up the canal and that I must see him. So off I went, facing the blizzard, supported 

 on either side by the lowdah and a coolie, without whom I could not have made the least 

 headway, as in my hurry I had only stepped into a pair of bamboo slippers. Arrived at the 

 engineer's boat I woke up the occupant, an uncommonly pleasant man who conferred his 

 inability to help me. However I soon got back to my boat and on my return to Shanghai was 

 given a new mast. This incident seems trivial, but suppose the boat had turned over, which it 

 might easily have done from the speed at which it was moving, or had run into the stone work 

 which faces the embankment, and all this in the small still hours of a pitilessly cold morning! 



What then? The remembrance of incidents like these is pleasanter than their experience. 



* * * « 



A very pretty little waterway is that which breaks off from the Maychee Creek at 

 Donko w, passes Lezar and Changshin and finds its exit into the Taihu at Capoo. The country 

 to the west of the creek is strongly suggestive of Wuhu, long dykes with creeks on either side, 

 beautiful lagoons well margined with sedge, many and long bamboo copses. It was in this 

 neighbourhood when shooting with S. Daly in 1879 that I had a startling experience. I had 

 wandered away, my dog boy being my sole attendant. The country was inviting looking 

 enough, and I was passing from a small tea plantation to some grass land beyond when all 

 of a sudden without any warning I found myself ten feet below the level of the land. It 

 was some moments before I realized my position and that I had walked into a pig pit whose 

 presence had been artfully and artistically concealed with branches, bracken and grass. 

 Happily the pointed stakes usually driven into the bottom of these pits were on this occasion 

 absent. The pit was half as wide again at its base as at its mouth, and to get out unaided 

 was an impossibility. So I shouted as loudly as I could but my dog boy who had gone to 

 the far side of a copse with the object of driving anything it might hold in my direction 

 heard not the vox clamantis. So I fired a few shots which finally succeeded in bringing him 

 to the scene. But how to get me out was the trouble. I handed him my gun but I could 

 not get any purchase on the sides of my prison. A happy thought then occurred to him. 

 He took my shooting knife, and with the saw that it contained succeeded in sawing 

 through a pretty thick bamboo. To this he fastened his girdle and then laid the bamboo 

 across the mouth of the pit. Naturally it was not long before I was above ground once 

 more, but the dread of a second edition of pig pits robbed the morning's shoot of much of 

 its pleasure. Being so deep these pits drain all the surrounding land and often become 

 nothing else than wells. Imagine yourself in six or seven feet of water with no one near to 

 lend a hand, and imagine an old sow with her farrow blundering in on the top of you ! ! 



n * % * 



In December 1882, I made the fourth of a party of which the other members were 

 Messrs. W. Paterson (head of Ewo) Geo. W. Coutts and Forrest, Consul at Swatow. Forrest 

 had my boat, because he wanted ** lots of room and air," Paterson and I occupied the Kung 

 Ping boat Swallow, and Coutts ruled alone in the Thistle, a centre-board, now lengthened and 

 still going strong. The commissariat was in the capable hands of Coutts who knew what 

 good food was, and dispensed royal hospitality. The whist table was placed on the 

 Thistle's centre-board every evening, and the Swallow usually played the rest. We had 

 worked into the Mowsan country for the purpose of getting amongst the pig. Day after 

 day passed, and though lowdah and coolies were assiduous in their enquiries we could not 



