loo Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



landed us at the door of the temple, looking westward 

 across the bridge. The walls are of brick on stone 

 foundation, as usual, the superstructure supported on 

 morticed wooden columns. One of the courts we found 

 filled with well-dressed women, comprising apparently the 

 rank and fashion of the city of the " Clouded Sun." They 

 were about fifty in number, and had just feasted, and were 

 now playing cards and dominoes, seated in parties round 

 the usual square tables. They are all stump-footed, but 

 healthy-looking, and, though curious to see him, are not at 

 all put out by the irruption of a tall barbarian in a flannel 

 suit, on his head a bath-towel twisted into a huge but grace- 

 ful turban (the only really effective sun-shade). The priest, 

 an unusually polished Chinaman, showed me round, and 

 told me that this new temple replaces an old, temple 

 washed away in the terrible flood of 1870, when the water 

 rose to a level with the present roof — nearly 200 feet above 

 the actual low-water level. This rebuilding cost 10,000 

 taels, about _;^i5oo, being little more than half what such a 

 work would cost at Shanghai. 



Wednesday, Mai-ch 28^/^.— The sun's heat in the morning is 

 intense. I go ashore to enjoy the morning air, and get 

 violently heated in scrambling over the precipitous towing- 

 paths. Up to noon it is dead calm; then the up-river 

 breeze gradually rises, and a chilling gale is upon you 

 before you are hardly aware of the change. This regular 

 easterly breeze, which sets in daily after the sun has gained 

 power, is invaluable to the crude native crafts which navigate 

 this river. In many long stretches the cliffs are vertical 

 and no towing-path exists, so that without a fair wind they 

 would never get up at all. 



Such was my experience to-day, after a long morning's 

 walk over a succession of rocky points and intervening 



