68 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



path is usually some 200 to 300 feet above the river, 

 and often, as it crosses a projecting point, entirely out of 

 sight of the boat, this is not always convenient. In one 

 place this afternoon, after walking two miles in as many 

 hours, stepping from boulder to boulder, I was only too 

 glad to descend and come on board again, as soon as a 

 sandy bay allowed the boat to bring up to the shore with 

 safety. It was at the Shin-tan, owing to the catching of the 

 tow-line in the rocks and its subsequent snapping, that 

 Consul Gardner with his two Hankow friends came to grief 

 last month. 



Next day we were off again at dawn (5.15), and crossed 

 to the north bank, where I landed on a rocky point, and 

 scrambled up 200 feet to the high level path, above which 

 the villages in these more open valleys are built. By open 

 valley, I mean a valley where the banks are not precipitous, 

 as in the gorges ; but they are still steep enough to rank as 

 gorges on an ordinary river. In fact, the whole journey 

 thus far has been in an almost continuous gorge and rapid. 

 The reach above Kwei-chow has a picturesque charm of its 

 own, from the steep mountain-sides being cultivated in 

 patches to their summits, and studded with small villages 

 embedded in trees and bamboo. ... At one village I 

 noticed a small stack of patent fuel, coal-dust kneaded with 

 clay into diminutive round cakes, just the size for a Chinese 

 portable oven, and I traced the coal to a small adit in the 

 side of the hill, shored up with timber, not more than three 

 feet high, and less than two feet wide. Out of this miserable 

 hole women laden with baskets of coal-dust on their backs 

 were painfully toiling. A small stream of water was running 

 out of the foot of the burrow. Thousands of these primitive 

 workings are seen along the whole length of the ravine, up 

 to and past Chung-king. 



