180 
SHE-PA-TAN. 
one of the principal timber trees of China, being used in building, 
and in the fabrication of articles of furniture. 
A species of Ficus *, called Yung-shoo by the Chinese, much re- 
sembling the banyan in habit, grew very commonly in sandy soil 
on the banks of rivers from the Po-yang lake to the mountain of 
Mei-ling. Its form gave a singularly grotesque character to the 
scenery. Its trunk is made up of a series of small stems always 
close together. Its branches are wide and straggling, but scarcely 
overshadow its arching roots rising above the soil and covering a con- 
siderable space of ground. 
But although the land on both sides the river was favourable to the 
growth of many beautiful and useful plants, it was seldom very pro- 
ductive in any of those which afford the essential vegetable support 
of mankind. Between the Po-yang lake and the Mei-ling mountain, 
the quantity of land cultivated in corn bore no proportion to that 
which was entirely barren or covered with plantations of Camellia. 
We proceeded on our route up the Kan-Keang, whose stream was 
clear as crystal, without meeting with any circumstance worth no- 
ticing till the 6th of December. On that day the boatmen sent 
a petition to the Ambassador, requesting a pecuniary gratuity to 
enable them to perform the usual rites before passing the She-pa-tan 
or eighteen cataracts, an appellation little applicable to what are 
only rocky shoals in the bed of the river. We had great diffi- 
culty indeed, but little danger in passing them, not even the most 
perilous, called Tien-san-tan, or the pillars of heaven. 
The rocks forming the shoals, when first met with, were of granite, 
and afterwards of a dark-coloured compact schistus much resembling 
the kill as of Cornwall. The river seemed to have worn away the 
superincumbent formation of sandstone, which narrowed the channel 
of the river into a mere ravine, and to have been checked in its de- 
* It is very closely allied in the outline of its leaves to Ficus benjamina of Wildenow, 
but differs from it in a less equal distribution of their nerves, and in wanting the white pro- 
minent spots on their upper surface. 
