Alone with Nature ^2) 



gloomy chasm before us. This is called the " Wu-shan-ta 

 hsia," i.e. Witches' Mountain Great Gorge, so named from 

 the district city of Wu-shan, the first town over the Szechuan 

 frontier, which is situated at its upper end. This gorge 

 varies from 350 to 600 yards in width, and, according to 

 the Chinese, is unfathomable. Throughout the whole 

 twenty miles' length of this grand gorge the river winds 

 round the base of precipitous cliffs, rising vertically in places 

 to 1000 feet, with still higher, all but perpendicular, slopes 

 above, and lofty mountain-pinnacles behind. The entrance, 

 as the river seems to disappear behind the mountains — range 

 upon range of which rise above us, the highest summits just 

 projecting above the fleecy clouds — presents a sublime and 

 solemn aspect. The silence is complete ; the rare junks are 

 lost in the immensity of the surrounding nature, and as the 

 current is slack, and a favourable breeze enables the crew 

 to rest awhile from their oars, Schiller's verses, written at 

 Koesen in Thuringia, amidst that beautiful but less grand 

 scenery, recur to my memory — 



" Bin ich denn wirklich allein, in deinen Armen, Natur I " 



Here, as at the Shin-tan, I observed kites fishing ; half- 

 naked men and boys also stand out on the rocks at the foot 

 of each small rapid, catching the minute fish, which alone 

 seem to frequent these troubled waters, with a hand dip-net. 



We had put our wounded trackers ashore at Pa-tung in 

 the night, and I was not well pleased to see that, when our 

 trackers were ashore, we had now only one man left in the 

 boat, besides the helmsman, to manage her in the event of 

 our again executing a " Ta-chang," as at the Yeh rapid 

 yesterday. The crew's cook, who formed the spare man on 

 board, was taking the injured man's place, and he proves a 

 most active and powerful worker, although he makes the 



