Warm Spting Gorge 197 



ponies are renowned throughout all Western China ; they 

 are probably, for their size, the most powerful animals in the 

 world. • 



All Szechuan rivers are torrents in the rainy season, and 

 journeys by them seem to be measured more by the amount 

 of water traversed in ascending them than by the actual 

 amount of ground gone over ; thus I was informed that the 

 journey before us was only ninety li, say twenty-five miles, 

 while the upward voyage is reckoned at 120 li. The li is no 

 definite measure, and varies perpetually from place to place ; 

 250 to a degree of latitude is a convenient standard generally 

 adopted by foreign travellers, which gives 3 "62 li to the 

 statute mile — a fairly correct average in Szechuan (in 

 Yiinnan the li is longer). 



The name of this, the only affluent from the north of any 

 size met with from the Han upwards — a distance of 800 

 miles — is, according to the maps, the " Chia-ling ho ; " but 

 here it is called the " Lin chiang ho," or river of Lin-chiang, 

 a place situated some distance higher up. From the spot 

 where we now embarked, we could look up to the gorge, by 

 which the stream forces its way through the range, the lower 

 slopes of which we had just descended. The gorge is steep 

 and narrow, with a rapid at its base precisely like the Yang- 

 tse gorges in miniature, and would well repay a visit. The 

 gorge is called the " Kwan-yin hsia " (Kwan-yin is the 

 Goddess of Mercy, and holds in the Buddhist worship a 

 position analogous to that of the Virgin Mary in Europe), 

 and its upper continuation, the "Wen fang hsia" ("Warm 

 Spring Gorge"). In it is a temple with mineral baths, 

 efficacious in skin diseases — with which more than half the 

 population seem afflicted. ' This gorge opens up the coal- 

 seam in which are the coal-workings I had just visited. 

 Here the coal is lowered down directly into barges at the 



