Excursion to the White-cliff Mountains 41 



south of the town, and hence the Feng-shui is ruined, and 

 needs " puhing," or supplementing by artificial means. For 

 the sake of the foreigners about to settle in Ichang, let us 

 hope the new departure will prove ineffectual. This uni- 

 versal prevalence of the belief in Feng-shui or Geomancy 

 gives interest to every step in Chinese travel. 



Upon one of the bright, cloudless, calm days, which 

 compose the monotonously beautiful Ichang winter, I once 

 set out with two chair-coolies carrying my chair — an open 

 wicker-work, or rather rattan, mountain sedan-chair — in 

 which were packed my bed and a change of clothes, also 

 one hired coolie carrying food. We crossed the Yang-tse, 

 and landed in a break in the cliffs, which line the right 

 bank, at the mouth of a narrow valley, which we ascended, 

 following the course of the stream which falls into the Great 

 River on its right bank, opposite the walled city of Ichang. 



After walking six or seven miles on an almost level 

 plain, crossing and recrossing the clear stream continually 

 on stepping-stones, the valley, hitherto half a mile wide, 

 narrowed to a ravine, on the left being the steep precipices 

 of the " Pai ai Shan " (White-cliff Mountains), and on the 

 right the conical, or rather pyramidal, hills, which are the 

 characteristic of Ichang scenery. The latter are limestone, 

 the former conglomerate, their varied outlines, the result of 

 erosion, dependent upon the toughness of the material. 



We then left the narrow patches of beans and wheat, 

 and the pine woods and bamboo groves sloping down the 

 talus, and entered upon a ravine choked with conglomerate 

 blocks, that have tumbled down from the overhanging peaks 

 (1500 feet high), until we reached a side valley on the right, 

 bounded by precipices on both sides, with the smallest 

 patches of cultivation here and there in apparently 



