JVars of the Three Kingdoms 83 



the boat up inch by inch. I cannot sufiSciently admire the 

 pluck and endurance of these poor coolies, earning but two 

 dollars in cash for a two months' voyage, and getting from 

 the Lao-ta three meals of coarse rice, flavoured with a little 

 fried cabbage, for their sustenance, upon which they are 

 called to put forth all their strength from dawn to dark 

 daily. This place is well named the " Tsei-ka-tse," or 

 " Narrow Barrier," and it seemed to produce a sudden drop 

 of four feet, which, with the bad foothold on shore, it looked 

 an impossibility to surmount. 



The Feng-hsiang Gorge is about four miles long, and it 

 took us three hours to get through it, the crew rowing hard 

 against the current, which above the Tsei-ka-tse seemed 

 otherwise hardly perceptible. At its mouth, narrowing the 

 channel to 200 yards under the right, and to barely 100 on 

 the left bank, right in the fainvay, stands a square-shaped 

 rock mass, now forty feet out of water, black-polished, as at 

 the Tsei-ka. This dangerous obstruction is known as the 

 " Yen-wei shih," or " Goose-tail " rock. During most of the 

 time of the summer floods it is about awash ; but whenever 

 it is covered, the authorities at Kwei-chow-fu detain the 

 junks, and will not allow them to descend until the reappear- 

 ance of the Goose-tail above the surface. A mark on the 

 embankment of Kwei-chow city, five miles above, coincides 

 with the top of the rock. At the present season, this 

 dreaded rock has all the appearance of a castle built to 

 command the pass. 



All this neighbourhood teems with legends of bygone 

 days, notably of the wars of the Three Kingdoms in the 

 second century, when the then kingdom of Hu-peh invaded 

 the kingdom of Shu or Szechuan by way of the Great River. 

 The Hu-peh fleet was arrested by a chain stretched across the 

 narrowest point in the gorge, near its western exit, and the 



