THE EDEN OF THE FLOWERY REPUBLIC 



361 



Photograph from Joseph Beech 



AS THERE IS NO WHEELED TRAFFIC IN SZE-CHUAN EXCEPT BY WHEELBARROW, THE 

 HIGHWAYS OVER THE HILLS OFTEN CONSIST OF A SERIES OF STEPS 



For many centuries and until yesterday, 

 the journey from Ichang to Chung-king, 

 a distance of 500 miles, required fully a 

 month and sometimes two. It was made 

 by native junk, pulled along after the 

 manner of the old-fashioned canal-boat, 

 but, instead of the tow-path mule, by a 

 crew of twenty to sixty men tugging at 

 the shore end of a bamboo hawser some- 

 times fully one-half mile in length. 



The task of these trackers is most 

 arduous and beset with constant danger. 

 Sometimes they are seen scrambling over 

 rocks and boulders upon which it would 

 seem impossible for men to travel ; next 

 Ave see them clinging to the sides of 

 precipitous cliffs where a slip costs a 

 limb or a life ; and again set on all fours, 



gripping fast to rock or shore, while the 

 crew aboard the boat pries it obliquely 

 into and up the stream by the bow-sweep 

 set against the onrushing current; then 

 plunging forward under the lash of the 

 fu-teo to gain headway as the boat is 

 released and swings shoreward. 



Today, dynamite is blasting a safer 

 course, and fourteen-knot steamers make 

 the journey in forty steaming hours. 

 The devils of the waters, as these river- 

 men will believe, have won their victories 

 also, for a large German commercial 

 steamer lies buried in 120 feet of water 

 at the entrance to one of the gorges. 



Tomorrow it will be the railway, for it 

 is now known that Sze-chuan holds a 

 golden store for the first road that enters 



