27 
CHAPTER IIT 
EXPEDITIONS TO CHANG-YANG AND SIN-TAN RAPID 
Want of forest near river—Chang-yang—Journey to—Description of 
Country—Pigs and leopards—Jungle—Reeves’ pheasant—Return to 
Ichang—Enormous creepers—Soap trees—Ichang Gorge——Pin-san-pa 
—Mu-tan Rapid—Ta-tung Rapid—Curiously worn rocks—Crews of 
large junks—Lu-kan Gorge—Shale—Sin-tan Rapid—Me-tan Gorge— 
Insults at Sin-tan—Chinese monopoly of steam navigation—-Steps up: 
precipices—Nan-too—‘ Needle of Heaven ’—Arrival at Ichang. 
Tue chief difficulty that presents itself in China to the 
entomologist is the lack of accessible virgin forest, and 
the want of reliable information as to where the rarer, 
or perhaps as yet undiscovered species, may be expected 
to befound. The rivers appear to be the natural high- 
roads of the natives, and as the banks are generally 
thickly populated, the forest has long ago disappeared. 
Marco Polo spoke of the river Yang-tze as being thickly 
wooded in places where a tree is not now to be seen for 
miles, and at the present day there are no trees worth 
felling within any distance of a stream that might be 
utilised to float the logs to a market. 
After many inquiries, I heard from a native botani- 
cal collector in the employ of Dr. Henry that a district 
