66 BANKS OF THE CHU-KIANG. ^ 
of grass among wliich it liabitually takes up its 
abode ; and a creature somewhat allied to him, 
and named gecko, is so freckled and spotted and 
blotched with brown, and umber, and bistre, that 
you can hardly separate liim from the surface of the 
weather-stained granite rocks in the chinks and 
crannies of which he passes his existence. 
All around these ancient cpiarries frown down 
upon us barren, red-tipped hills, rough with scraggy 
fir-trees, and crested here and there with wind-bent 
pines. On a brown, fissured, rounded hill a tall, 
shapely pagoda rises conspicuous, and half buiied in 
a sacred grove at the base is an old many-gabled, 
dragon-invested joss-house or temple, picturesque, 
quaint, and eminently Chinese ; while, indistinct in 
the fiir distance, arc the pale grey lofty mountains. 
The banks of the Chu-Kiaug, or Pearl Eiver, are 
planted at regular intervals with the dark-leaved 
li-chee and peach-trees now covered with blossom, 
agreeably relieved with chili bushes and clumps of 
the pale green, broad-leaved plantain i while the level 
padi-fields, half under water, are yellow with heav)^- 
