End of our Voyage 135 



province may roughly be described as a high basin situated 

 at the foot of the great snow-mountains that wall in the 

 Thibetan table-land, and cut off from free communication with 

 the other provinces by wide mountain-ranges less lofty than 

 these, but hardly less precipitous. Hence it has been even 

 more independent of the Central Government than is else- 

 where the case in the loosely attached organism known as the 

 Chinese Empire ; and since the great cataclysm which over- 

 spread it during the wars consequent upon the Manchu 

 invasion in the seventeenth century, it has enjoyed an almost 

 uninterrupted peace. Under these circumstances, its pro- 

 sperity is assured by an exceptionally fertile soil, a general 

 sub-tropical climate, and a purely nominal land-tax. The 

 people are amiable, and their civility to the stranger is a 

 delightful surpise, after the rude treatment he has been sub- 

 jected to in the coast and central provinces. Of course the 

 few foreign travellers here all speak the language, and hence 

 we are not regarded, as we are on the coast, as " speechless " 

 barbarians who have never learnt manners. 



I was received here most hospitably by the proprietor of 

 a large piece-goods hong, in which I proposed to stay while 

 making a hurried investigation of the capabilities of the place, 

 in view of the clause in the Chefoo Convention, stipulating 

 for the opening of Chung-king to the foreign trade, being 

 carried out. 



We terminated our long voyage in the Old Lady of Shen 

 by running her nose up against the steepy rocky slope 

 at the foot of the east gate of the city, standing about two 

 hundred feet above us. While my Chinamen were gone 

 ashore to announce our arrival, I waited in the boat, and 

 amused myself watching the naked gamins chasing the rats 

 which were being washed out of their holes by the rapidly 

 rising river. This rise was seriously disconcerting the 



