Reception in Chung-king 299 



Customs station at Tang chia t'6, ten miles below Chung-king, 

 where we had been requested to wait by the Reception 

 Committee arranged to welcome our arrival ; — our trouble- 

 some but interesting voyage at last accomplished. 



Early next morning, after we had cleaned ship and got 

 out our bunting, the Reception Committee, with the greater 

 portion of the British and American community in Chung- 

 king, together with Chinese friends, some fifty in all, came 

 in sight in house-boats covered with flags. These, including 

 the ensigns of the British, American, and Japanese consuls, 

 were transferred to the Leechuen, and we steamed on 

 triumphantly after taking our friends on board. These gave 

 us a rapturous welcome, our popular American doctor paying 

 me the highest compliment in his power by assuring me that 

 my enterprise had made me worthy of being an American. 

 Upon reaching Chung-king, the Taotai (Governor) sent more 

 gunboats, all gaily decorated, and at length, under a salute 

 of cannon land a deluge of fire-crackers, we moored below 

 the Chao tien m^n, the " Gate that looks to Heaven," of the 

 ancient city of Chung-king. Here an address of welcome 

 was read and replied to, after which we steamed across to 

 our permanent berth in the rock-formed harbour of Lung 

 men Hao — the lagoon of the Dragon Gate. 



Our voyage from Ichang, a distance roughly estimated at 

 500 miles, had occupied eleven steaming days, or, including 

 detentions, just three weeks altogether. It was a first ex- 

 periment, which could not be hurried ; it was, for necessary 

 reasons, made at a season when the rapids were at their worst, 

 and it was made with a vessel of insufficient power. Never- 

 theless my object was achieved, in demonstrating the possi- 

 bility of navigating the Upper Yang-tse, and in drawing public 

 attention to its necessity. When we consider that, as things 



