Coffin Gorge and Cedar Garden 75 



observed natural caves under an overhanging ledge, the 

 entrance to which was partially walled up. These inaccessible 

 nooks had formed the retreat of the sparse inhabitants 

 during the Tai-ping and other rebellions. In another spot, 

 at a break in the cliffs, lay a pile of square blocks of what 

 looked like black-leaded rocks — some as large as a house, 

 fallen apparently from the summit of the mountain behind 

 them, all curiously fretted by the water, and looking as 

 though burnt and blackened in a furnace — and called by 

 the Chinese, not inappropriately, " Ho yen shih," i.e. Fire 

 Smoke Rock. 



This reach is named the " T'ieh kwan tsai hsia," or Iron 

 Coffin Gorge, from a projecting, coffin-shaped rock in a 

 towering cliff on the left bank. At its entrance is a rock- 

 strewn rapid, called the " Mu-chu tan," or Sow Rapid, up 

 which we struggled in the usual way. Above the Coffin 

 Gorge, iron chains are affixed to the cliffs, fifty feet above 

 the present level, for the use of the upward-bound junks in 

 the time of the summer freshets. A junk stole these chains 

 some time -back, when, upon arriving in Hankow, lo ! the 

 chain had been metamorphosed into a snake ! The alarmed 

 junk people hurried back to the violated spot, and replaced 

 the snake on the rocks, when it at once resumed its original 

 form, and now hangs again in its place on the rocks in 

 evidence 1 



The last inhabited spot in Hu-peh is the village of " Nan 

 Mu yu'rh," i.e. Cedar Garden, romantically situated astride a 

 steep glen, down which flows a small mountain bum, which 

 has its source in a cavern about one-third of the distance 

 from the summit of the 2000-feet-high mountain upon which 

 it is built. The two portions of the village are united mid- 

 way by a covered bridge. I landed at the foot of a flight of 

 five or six hundred steep stone steps, which form the main 



