The Miao Chi-tse and Tzmg Yang Rapids 97 



Tuesday, March 2'jth. — The crew roused me at five, as 

 usual. With the first glimpse of dawn, the night-mat and 

 awning framework having been stowed away meanwhile, we 

 started, rowing up a long eddy : the valley still narrowed 

 to the river-bed, almost steep enough to be called a gorge. 

 Very little cultivation, the hills being strewn with rocks, 

 which, where fallen into the river, formed points and con- 

 sequent rapids : the strata are mainly of sandstone and 

 horizontal ; the current four to five knots. We passed the 

 minor rapid of Miao chi-tse (Temple Stairs), the water 

 rushing over a succession of rock steps with, however, a 

 clear channel, but an eight-knot current in mid-stream. 

 Here a local passenger-boat discharged its fares to walk 

 over the boulders, while it was being hauled up the rapid 

 empty ; and it was characteristic to, see the men run down 

 the landing-plank, leaving the women, with their hideous, 

 crippled feet, to get along as best they could. The babies 

 were taken ashore and carried round the rapid, strapped to 

 the backs of boys. Shortly afterwards we pulled up at the 

 foot of a foaming cataract, called Tung yang tse. An eddy 

 rushing up to this, and tumbling over the rocks with little 

 less fury than the main stream, brought us up at a run, and 

 it needed two stoppered bamboos to fend the boat off the 

 rocks, upon which I alighted with the trackers. 



This rapid is interesting, as showing what many other 

 rapids need, an attempt at artificial improvement. The 

 rapid is formed, on one side, by a ledge of solid rock jutting 

 out from the mountains on the left bank ; and, on the other 

 side, by a huge cone of dejection, consisting of gigantic 

 boulders, the debris brought down by a small affluent, at 

 this season little more than a brook, running through a cleft 

 in the lulls opposite. Its mouth is diverted by a great 

 barrier of neatly morticed stones, with a paved summit 



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