28 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



squatting on the usual lotus-leaf, others with wings. The 

 entrance and window staircase, which is built in the wall, 

 is pitch dark, and so narrow that my shoulders touched both 

 walls as I cautiously groped my way up the broken steps. 

 From the four narrow windows in the topmost story I looked 

 north over the flooded country through which we had 

 just passed on our way from Hankow, south over the low 

 land and paddy fields on the opposite bank, east over the 

 picturesque (as, owing to the highly finished roofs, all Chinese 

 towns are from a distance) town of Shasze, and west over 

 the waste of sandbanks through which at this winter season 

 our to-morrow's course lay. I had to share my binocular 

 with the rabble who accompanied me, and by whom I was 

 nearly suifocated in the descent. — A fine spring day, 60° 

 Fahrenheit in the cabin. 



Monday, March i2ih. — Owing to fresh delays on the part 

 of my Shansi friend, we did not get away till the afternoon, 

 and then again, at the last moment, we had to wait for my 

 special aversion, the cook, who had gone ashore again to 

 buy tea and probably to take a parting pipe in some opium 

 den, which he much preferred to the boat, in which he could 

 only enjoy his pipe in solitude; and at length, at two p.m., 

 with a fair wind, we got under way for Ichang. I had thus 

 ample time, while trying to control my impatience at the 

 needless delay, on this the third day at Shasze, to examine 

 the buildings on the embankment, the bulk of which were 

 of wood, from which the varnish had disappeared years 

 since, of two stories, and more or less upright, as befits 

 architecture founded on the tent of the Nomad. A few 

 brick houses, sadly in want of a fresh coating of whitewash, 

 were interspersed along the quay — analogous to the Cafd- 

 Restaurant of the French; one immediately opposite or 

 rather almost immediately overhead, rejoicing in the name 



