Destruction by Rains 273 



In the year 1896, during the months of August and 

 September, rain fell continuously day and night, and created 

 widespread damage throughout the province. The harvest 

 of rice had been a bountiful one, but the crop was largely 

 destroyed by mildew, and a disastrous famine throughout 

 Szechuan and in Western Hu-peh resulted. On the mountain 

 slopes in this latter district, as well as in Eastern Szechuan, 

 hundreds of square miles of arable land were washed bodily 

 down off the steeper slopes, leaving nothing but bare rock : 

 this, added to the fact that much of the best land in Western 

 China is given up to the beneficent and noxious poppy, and 

 so abstracted from cereals, led to a repetition of the famine 

 in the following year ; indeed, owing to the absence of easy 

 inter-communication, there is now rarely a season in which 

 some district of the rich province of Szechuan is not a 

 victim to famine with its attendant loss of life, pestilence, and 

 riots. This "glorious" rapid is situated in the district of 

 Yun-yang, in Szechuan, and about thirty miles west of the city 

 of that name, described in page 98. The name of the 

 spot is Lung ching Wan, or Dragon's Ford Bay ; the new 

 landslip, the cause of the rapid, is on the left or north bank 

 of the river, in longitude 109° 16' east, and latitude 30° 54' 

 north. Mr. Consul Bourne^ from whose description in the 

 Geographical Magazine, August, 1897, I take the above 

 figures, says of it — 



" The current in the middle is very fast, and on either bank 

 huge waves are thrown up by the water dashing against the 

 rocks below. As our eyes fell upon it for the first time, a large 

 Szechuan junk, coming down stream, struck a rock in the trough 

 of the waves and was a wreck in three minutes. ... A hundred 

 junks and a thousand lives have been already (December, 1896) 

 lost, we are told. . . . About five hundred junks were lying at 



T 



