The Voyageurs of the Yang-tse 231 



oar to oar, his weight having apparently no effect whatever 

 upon the huge tree-stems as he leapt from one to the other. 

 Gesticulating and shouting at the top of his voice, he 

 belabom-ed the bare backs of the men with his rattan, and 

 thus succeeded possibly in bringing up our speed at the 

 critical points to a mile an hour ; then the skipper would 

 take his turn in urging the unfortunate " tui jao tih " (oars- 

 men) to exert themselves to the utmost; meanwhile the 

 men themselves shout like demons, and stamp on the loose 

 deck boards as fast as they can move their feet. An on- 

 looker suddenly set down here would imagine pandemonium 

 set loose. I went to the door of the foremost cabin, looking 

 out on the deck, and gazed on the strange scene ; my smiles 

 (they were all facing me at the time, rowing, for a change, 

 with their backs to the bow) set the men off laughing and 

 shouting still louder, when the surly skipper beckoned to 

 me to go in again, and upon my afterwards demanding an 

 explanation, told me that my presence disturbed the men. 

 I believe myself, however, that my being there cheered 

 and amused them, and made them work all the harder. 

 Blakiston tells us that he will ever hold in pleasant memory 

 the intrepid voyageurs, as he calls them, of the Upper 

 Yang-tse : most assuredly a more cruelly worked or more 

 poorly paid, and withal a better-tempered set of fellows are 

 not to be met with the whole world over. Dirty and ill- 

 paid, mostly covered from head to foot with itch-sores, and 

 treated like dogs, they work with a will, and are always 

 ready for a joke. During the whole of my trip, I, in my 

 ridiculous foreign dress, never heard an uncivil word from 

 one of them ; and, as I have related in my account of the 

 upward journey, on more than one occasion, when rambling 

 along the shore I found myself unexpectedly caught in a tight 

 place, they good-naturedly came to my assistance. With all 



