27 



CHAPTEE III 



EXPEDITIONS TO CHANG-YANG AND SIN-TAN RAI'ID 



Want of forest near river — Chang-yang — Journey to — Description of 

 Country — Pigs and leopards — Jungle — Reeves' pheasant — Eetiurn to 

 Icliang — Enormous creepers — Soap trees — Icliang Gorge — Pin-san-pa 

 — Mu-tan Eapid — Ta-tmig Rapid — Curiously worn rocks — Crews of 

 large jiuiks — -Lu-kan Gorge — Shale — Sin-tan Rapid — Me-tan Gorge — 

 Insults at Sin-tan — Chinese monopoly of steam navigation — Steps up 

 precipices — Nan-too — ' Needle of Heaven ' — Arrival at Ichang. 



The chief difficulty that presents itself in China to the 

 entomoloi^ist is the lack of accessible virmn forest, and 

 the want of reliable information as to where the rarer, 

 or perhaps as yet undiscovered species, may be expected 

 to be found. The rivers appear to be the natural high- 

 roads of the natives, and as the banks are generally 

 thickly populated, the forest has long ago disappeared. 

 Marco Polo spoke of the river Yang-tze as being thickly 

 wooded in places where a tree is not now to be seen for 

 miles, and at the present day there are no trees worth 

 felling within any distance of a stream that might be 

 utilised to float the logs to a market. 



After many inquiries, I heard from a native botani- 

 cal collector in the employ of Dr. Henry that a district 



