26 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



raise more trouble and cause further delay, I forebore 

 to pitch the unsavoury package into the river, as I should 

 have liked to do, especially as he had not brought the 

 supplies, thus preventing our starting to-morrow at day- 

 light, as I had intended, and making the time occupied 

 in the transfer of boats extend to the third day — such is 

 travel in China. 



Shasze has a noble stone embankment facing south and 

 south-west, built up in three tiers, each about twelve feet 

 high, with a fine promenade or bund on the top. This was 

 built up in the time of China's greatness. Imagine the 

 Thames Embankment built on the banks of a river with 

 an annual instead of a daily tide, and that a degenerate 

 people have gradually encroached on the roadway until at 

 places a sedan-chair can hardly pass. In other parts, and 

 wherever there is room, beggar huts crowd the traffic to the 

 very edge of the bank, the ancient stone balustrade being 

 intact only in a very few isolated spots ; over this edge all 

 the rubbish and filth of a big city are thrown until the stone 

 river-wall is hidden for more than half its extent, and over 

 these muck-heaps lead steep steps up from the tiers of junks, 

 about two thousand in number, and averaging thirty tons 

 burthen, which are moored the whole length of the city, 

 their bows to the bank. In these mud-heaps, which I 

 watched during the six weary hours I was waiting for my 

 luggage, a mixed filthy assemblage of half-starved dogs, pigs, 

 chifFonniers and chiffonneuses, these latter with the stumped 

 feet which in North China rich and poor alike affect, were 

 grubbing assiduously : a good specimen of China in her 

 decline, decay, and dirt. Fine stone stairs, crowned by 

 archways, are let into the embankment at regular intervals ; 

 but these are in such a filthy condition of black slime that 

 the steep paths in the muck-mounds are generally preferred. 



