SigJtalling by Beat of Drum 95 



the trackers and the tow-line, which in inaccessible places 

 is taken on by the tender and made fast to a rock ahead, 

 and haiJed on by the crew on board the junk. Many of 

 these tenders are fine vessels, forty feet long, eight feet 

 broad, and four feet deep. A mast forty feet high, and 

 rising in the form of shears from each gunwale, carries a 

 huge square lug-sail with a heavy wooden yard, and a boom 

 of bamboo at the foot, round which the sail is furled, and 

 which then stands perpendicularly up and down the mast. 

 The wind being almost constantly up-stream, this big sail, 

 which can only be set when the wind is directly aft, sends 

 the tight boat along flying. On the Chuan Ho, the Szechuan 

 river, or Upper Yang-tse, only two winds are known by the 

 boatmen — the " Shang feng," or " up wind ; " and the " Hia 

 feng," or, " down wind." 



Meanwhile, the drummer-man on board the big junk 

 drums away as hard as he can, as a signal to the trackers to 

 exert their utmost force, alternating with a rum-ti-tum, rum- 

 ti-tum — the signal to cease hauling. Away from the rapids 

 the river seems deserted ; the surroundings are on such a grand 

 scale that the scattered junks are lost, and in such a spot one 

 would be led to believe that there was no traffic on the river 

 at all. The high-water marks, far away above the masts of 

 the largest junks, and which at a distance appear to be only 

 a few feet above the river level, add to the deception. At 

 Kwei-chow these are fully 100 feet high, and in exceptional 

 years the water, dammed up by the narrow gorges below, 

 rises many tens of feet higher. The order, discipline, and 

 promptness displayed by the crews on the Chuan Ho is a 

 striking contrast to the lax way in which, in other parts of 

 China, bodies of workmen seem all to be giving orders 

 together. 



Our progress to-day was through a succession of eddies 



