200 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



naturally hurried through this terrible scene, and 

 left others to extract from these ruins of an Eastern 

 civilisation some shreds of comfort, that such chaos 

 was the making straight of the path for a better 

 future ; but unfortunately one of those accidents 

 which will befall sailors navigating little -known 

 waters happened to us just as we crossed the thres- 

 hold, so to speak, of this spot. Between the hills 

 on which Ching-keang-foo stands and Silver Island, 

 the Great Eiver, with a perversity known only to 

 fresh-water streams, chose to cram itself through a 

 narrow gateway of one hundred and fifty yards in 

 width, instead of taking what would seem a natural 

 course, and cutting out a channel, of any breadth 

 or depth, in the fine plain to the northward a direc- 

 tion in which, however, it does throw off one petty 

 branch, as much as to say that the Yangstze knew 

 that it might flow through there, but would not be 

 dictated to. Through this gateway we had to go, 

 against a current running like a mill-stream, but 

 without any misgivings on the score of rocks, because 

 the chart showed a deep channel, and we had not 

 only been through it in the Columbine, but had 

 known big two-deckers to drop through it in past 

 times. A rock, however, there was; and with all 

 our leadsmen crying an untold number of fathoms 

 of water and we had some of them out at the jib- 

 boom end the Furious fairly perched herself upon 

 a pinnacle of hard limestone, just where there should 



