276 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



ignorant of the existence of the rapid, rowing down stream, 

 were caught in it before they had time to make any prepara- 

 tions to descend, and so were swamped unexpectedly, with 

 the total loss of their crews : now an inscription on the cliff 

 a mile above the rapid warns descending junks that " a new 

 vicious rapid has sprung up." At the time of my first visit, in 

 1897, the mandarin in charge of the rapid informed me that 

 over one thousand liyes had been lost ; I myself saw a small 

 boat engulfed and one large salt-junk with sixty rowers 

 caught in the whirlpool below. This occurred at noon as 

 she was descending the rapid, of course lightened of her 

 cargo; and it was just sunset when I saw her at last get free. 

 There was no danger as long as daylight lasted, with an 

 empty junk, high out of water and well manned ; but it was 

 an extraordinary sight to watch how the "Dragon in the 

 Rapid " baffled the persistent efforts of the crew to escape 

 from the vicious circle that held them in its watery grip. 

 Safety lies in descending the rapid in the centre, where the 

 compression has arched the water and piled it up high 

 above the eddies on each side; to hit this centre a 

 descending junk has to steer between a gap in the reef 

 over which the water now falls before it forms the rapid. 

 This reef was harmless originally, as the main body of the 

 river lay to the north of it ; now the new landslide has 

 pushed up to this reef, and over and through it the whole 

 river now passes. 



During the first winter after the formation of the rapid in 

 the month of February, when the water is at its lowest, 

 the Chinese attempted to improve the channel by digging 

 away the point. The salt guild of Lu-chow, whose junks 

 had been the greatest sufferers, gained permission from the 

 Szechuan Viceroy to do what they could with manual labour 



