1864.] The Question of British Trade with Western China. 417 



to Shoaggoo— and between Sawuddy and the upper defile. Still, even 

 in these parts boats drawing five and six feet of water can always find 

 passage and therefore with the aid of pilots or masters who have " an 

 eye for water," steamers could undoubtedly do so as well. 



" The two defiles met with below Bammo are both remarkable for 

 the contrast they present to the other parts of the river in their 

 contracted breadth, their great depth and except in the freshes, their 

 almost imperceptible surface current. The lower defile, extending 

 from Singoo to Male, has an average breadth of about one-fourth of a 

 mile, the banks are wooded to below the high flood-mark and slope down 

 from the hills whose steep sides form the valley of the defile, so as to 

 afford a continuous series of pretty views, without any grand or 

 imposing scenery. 



" The second defile, much shorter than the lower one, is also of 

 another character ; approaching it from below, the narrowing of the 

 river towards its mouth is gradual, but before entering it the high 

 hills led one to expect that once within, the scenery would be some- 

 thing totally different from that seen either in the open reaches of the 

 river, or in the lower defile. There was little room for disappointment. 

 Soon hard limestone rocks mottled and striped with calcspar veins, 

 formed the boundaries of the river, scarce a third of a mile across. 

 As the channel narrowed still further, these rocks give place to bold 

 and precipitous hills rising from the water's edge, clothed, where not 

 quite perpendicular, by thick masses of forest foliage, — and then to 

 magnificent precipices, looking naked and defiant over the placid stream^ 

 and making the rugged jungle beside them appear beautifully soft. 



" The most lofty of these cliffs is about a third of its length from 

 the upper or eastern end of the defile. Overhanging the deep but quiet 

 stream is a rough mass of rock about fifty feet in height, topped, it 

 is needless to say, by a little pagoda, that peeps out from between 

 the branches of some shrubs that have crept up from the jungle 

 below, as if to look up and down the river. Close behind this rock, 

 there rises straight up with one unbroken front, the face of half a 

 mountain of which one cannot help asking < Who or what has split it 

 in two to let the river pass ?' One involuntarily looks to the other side 

 for the remaining half, but there lofty mountains form an irreoailar 

 amphitheatre, with smaller hills piled one on another, leading up to 

 them from the river side, The face of the precipice, perpendicular as 



3 k 



