38 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



them to madness j they rush out violently barking, and as a 

 rule stop short of biting, but to any one with sensitive nerves 

 there is no enjoyment in a walk outside the police-guarded 

 roads of the larger " settlements." In the present instance 

 I was attacked by a dog who did not bark, and I had no 

 stick ready for him ; but such instances are rare. 



Now, in 1898, the "foreign" community has increased 

 to twelve Europeans employed in the Imperial Maritime 

 Customs and thirty missionaries. The mercantile com- 

 munity is represented alone by the agents of the three 

 steamer companies running to Hankow, and by the agent 

 of the Chung-king Transport Company, Limited, all of 

 whom are Chinese. The trade of Ichang is almost ex- 

 clusively a transit trade. The town is situated in the 

 midst of a poor, mountainous country, whose people, unlike 

 the Szechuanese, have little money to spend upon foreign 

 luxuries. Ichang is the capital of a prefecture, the Fu or 

 Prefect having numerous Hsien, or districts, under his juris- 

 diction. The trade is a busy retail one, but there are no 

 large banks and wealthy wholesale merchants such as con- 

 gregate in the plain Chen, or mart, of Shasze, eighty miles 

 lower down. 



Friday, March i(>th. — A calm, mild, sunny morning, the 

 sky still obscured by the otherwise invisible dust. These 

 dust-storms, which the nof-west gales of winter bring from 

 the Mongolian deserts, carry the fine sand particles to an 

 incredible distance. On one occasion I was on board a 

 steamer in the Inland Sea of Japan, also in the month of 

 March, when, in midday, the captain was compelled to 

 bring the vessel to an anchor, as though in a North-Sea fog. 

 By means of these dust-storms, the plains of North-Western 

 China are supposed by geologists to have been raised, in the 

 course of ages, several hundred feet. 



