Remedying the Aspect 7^ 



flat, was about ten square yards. Above the rapid, we 

 crossed and recrossed the river, rowing vigorously to catch 

 favouring eddies, and to avoid numerous " Chi-pa," or 

 races, and then tracked up to the head of the reach to 

 another right-angled turn in the channel, off the point of 

 which is the rapid called " Heng-liang-tse," i.e. " the Cross- 

 beam." We moored under the point, a pile of loose, precipi- 

 tous rocks, 150 feet high, detained an hour by a strong westerly 

 gust of wind and rain, against which it would have been im- 

 possible to have made headway. At length we made another 

 start, and crawled and clawed along the precipitous banks 

 of the Pa-tung reach, past the unwalled district, city of 

 Pa-tung, in which a small coal trade alone exists. Its main 

 street is built on a steep bank about 100 feet above the present 

 level, and it is said by unfortunate magistrates appointed 

 to it to be the poorest district city in the province. Poor 

 as it is, however, its inhabitants have come to the conclusion 

 that its poverty is due, not to its isolated situation among 

 barren mountains, nor yet to the prohibition by the authorities 

 of modem appliances for improving its coal output, but to 

 a defect in its " Feng-shui." Great sacrifices have therefore 

 been made to remedy this defect, and evidences of these 

 are seen in six completed stories of a new pagoda, which is 

 bemg built on a conspicuous point of hard white rock on 

 the left bank, a mile or more below the town. In Eastern 

 China, where we see the pagodas mostly neglected and in 

 ruin, we little imagine that new pagodas still continue to be 

 built in other parts of the empire. Nearly every town on 

 the river has a pagoda, new or old, situated a mile or two 

 below it, and generally on the left or north bank (the river 

 flows roughly east and west), which is supposed to prevent 

 the wealth of the town being swept past it by the rapid 

 current for the benefit of the cities below. 



