254 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



English charts, until it emerges into its delta prober at 

 Kiang-yin, no miles above the mouth of its estuary at 

 Yang-tse Cape. The stream leaves the mountains at the 

 Ichang Gorge, 960 nautical miles from its mouth; and some 

 fifty miles below this point the boulders and gravel of the 

 Upper River give place to banks of soft alluvium, the outline 

 of which varies every season, notwithstanding the gigantic 

 embankments with which it is sought to retain the stream in 

 its channel. These begin a short distance above the great 

 emporium of Shasze, situated in the midst of the Hu-peh 

 plain, eighty-three miles below Ichang. This, by the way, 

 i? one of the important towns, with which we were debarred 

 from trading, although it is regularly passed by our steamers 

 on their voyages between the so-called open ports, until the 

 Japanese forced it open, in reaUty as well as in name, by 

 the Simonoseki treaty. Shasze has at least ten times the 

 trade of Ichang. Here we find the river, at the time of its 

 summer floods, running with a six-knot current at a level of 

 ten or fifteen feet above that of the surrounding country, 

 the great dyke on the north bank being continuous nearly to 

 Hankow; while owing to the decay of the embankments 

 the south bank is open to the floods as far as the eye can 

 reach, a vast inland sea is then formed, which mingles its 

 waters with those of the Tung-ting Lake proper, from which 

 its outline is indistinguishable. From this point downwards 

 the fall in the bed is comparatively slight. 



A comparison of three years' simultaneous barometrical 

 readings at Chung-king (in Szechuan) and Sikawei (the 

 Jesuit observatory near Shanghai), and the rksumk of 

 some 4000 observations enumerated in Mr. Saber's paper 

 on the subject, exhibit the almost incredibly small difference 

 of level between the two places of 630 feet. Now, as the 

 average rate of the current down the rapids, which, large 



