1 6 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



prospect • all were in port, keeping the New Year's holidays, 

 and a dull leaden sky completed the gloom of the chill 

 February morning. 



Little of interest occurred on the voyage up as we steamed 

 on through four days and nights, picking up and setting 

 down the rare passengers moving at this festal time. We 

 spent an hour upon a sandbank above Kiukiang, ploughing 

 up the muddy bottom in our endeavours to get afloat again. 

 Off Nganking, the capital city of the province of Nganhui, 

 we had the misfortune to collide with a crockery-laden junk, 

 ■ the captain of which quickly ran his vessel ashore, and so 

 saved her from sinking. She was one of the few junks that 

 set sail in the early days of the New Year in order to take 

 advantage of the holidays, during which the Likin or tax 

 stations are closed, and so the junks pass free. Our worthy 

 skipper anchored at once, and put off in a boat to ascertain 

 the extent of the damage. The bales of blue and white 

 rice-bowls of which the cargo consisted, were quickly un- 

 laden and placed on the bank, the hole was patched up and 

 the cargo restored, and the junk taken in tow to Kiukiang, 

 her owner's home. Here the damage was appraised and 

 paid for, and the incident ended. But I could not avoid 

 being impressed with the practical method adopted by the 

 Chinese in the construction of their flimsy-looking junks — in 

 building the hull in compartments, a consequence of which 

 is that, although accidents on the river are frequent, a total 

 loss rarely occurs. 



The winter sun, always warm in these latitudes, was 

 shining brightly as we moored alongside the great quay, or 

 " Bund," which extends along the river-front of the British 

 settlement at Hankow. As at Shanghai, a roadway, lined 

 with trees, some eighty yards wide, separates the palatial 

 residences of the merchants from the steep river-shore, 



V 



