2 24 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



same coolie would get if on board a foreign steamer^at 

 least eight dollars a month, his rice costing two dollars — 

 with the toils of a galley-slave exchanged for almost nominal 

 labour. Steamers on this part of the Yang-tse would 

 naturally be regarded with some jealousy ; but if, as they 

 should do, they employed local labour, and did not bring 

 more strangers from other provinces than were necessary to 

 teach the new hands their work, opposition would soon be 

 disarmed. I was constantly asked when we were going to 

 begin running steamers, and it shows how little heart for 

 untried enterprises foreigners in China now possess, that (in 

 1883) seven years should have elapsed since the right to run 

 steamers on the Upper Yang-tse was acquired, under the 

 Chefoo Convention, without any attempt to take advantage 

 of the privilege having been made. 



Soon after noon we, to my great disgust, brought up 

 alongside the bank in the " t'o '' or lake-like expanse of com- 

 paratively smooth water at the mouth of the " Tung lo hsia,'' 

 or " Brass Gong " Gorge, which, like all the gorges, seems to 

 turn off sharply at right angles to the river's previous course 

 through a cleft in the hills, the entrance to which is entirely 

 hidden until you are directly opposite to it. Here, ten miles 

 below the city, is the first barrier, and the salt cargo had to 

 be again checked. Meanwhile, the laggards of our crew, 

 who had failed to join in Chung-king, were to come up with 

 us here. There was no village at this station, nothing but 

 a roomy bamboo house for the Customs officers, with the 

 customary smart gunboat in attendance. We were delayed 

 here four hours in the hot sun, with nothing to do but write 

 up my journal and watch little boys on the bank making and 

 launching sailing-rafts of reeds, ingenious models of the 

 bamboo rafts in use on the mountain streams throughout all 

 China. We at last unmoored, and drifted into the Gong 



