228 
[No. 3, 
Notes on the River Yang-tse-Kiang. 
in blossom on the side of those nearest the river, while the ground 
between them and the water was green with wheat and willows ; in 
the distance they appeared well wooded, but there was probably 
nothing but underwood, no timber having been seen brought down 
to the river since quitting the late. 
The town of Chikiang stands on the right bank ; a battlement- 
ed wall runs round three sides of it, that on the river side with a 
large portion of the suburbs having been laid in ruins by an unusual 
rise of the river in 1860. The scenery in this part of the river is 
very fine and the change most refreshing after the flat country below 
Yangchi. 
Itu (hien) the next town reached is also walled ; it stands on the 
right bank at the junction of the river Chinkiang with the Yang-tse ; 
a range of hills runs to the East, while to the West mountains rise 
to a considerable height ; the sand flats in the bed of the river are 
not so numerous as lower down ; the hanks become clayey and 
gravelly, while in some places rocks of conglomerate stand out from 
the shore ; soon after leaving Itu, the course is between vertical 
cliffs of conglomerate, and the river narrows to 490 yards from 
an average of eight or nine hundred ; reed and rubbish left on 
bushes and in crevices of the rocks, show the rise of the river during 
the floods to be occasionally sixty or seventy feet above its level 
in the end of March ; last year, it was unusually high ; its rise in 
June is probably from forty to fifty feet higher than in the cold 
months ; this will not appear so much when it is considered that the 
river is here only fifty yards more than a quarter of a mile in width, 
and at Hankow where it is fully a mile, the rise in June was ascer- 
tained to be twenty-seven feet, the river being even then rising. 
The hills below Ichang are immense masses of conglomerate, not 
in continued ranges, but standing sometimes singly, sometimes in 
groups of two or three, and of all sorts of shapes and sizes ; some 
are flat topped, others run up into sharp peaks, some are cultivated 
while others are too precipitous to hold soil, and on these a few 
stunted, thorny bushes grow ; in some are natural caves used as houses 
and temples ; the bases of some are overhung by the tops, and under 
these, if a stream is at hand, the inhabitants construct huts, merely 
by building a wall with a doorway, from the ground to the rock 
overhead ; from the highest peaks nothing could be seen towards 
