[26] Glycene hispides (Dr. Morrison).
[27] According to information obtained by the Russian Diplomatic Mission in Peking.
[28] Information received by the Russian Diplomatic Mission in Peking.
[29] Taking the port of Newchwang, through which, with certain exceptions, all exports of native produce and imports of foreign merchandise and Chinese productions pass, in 1871 16 steamers and 203 sailing vessels entered the port, with a total tonnage of 65,933 tons; in 1881, 114 steamers and 218 sailing vessels, with a tonnage of 159,098 tons; and in 1891, 372 steamers and 61 sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 334,709 tons. In the same period, British tonnage had increased from 38.6 of the whole to 58 per cent. of the whole. In 1871 German tonnage nearly equalled British, being 37.6 of the whole, but it had declined in 1891 to 28 per cent. of the whole.
CHAPTER XV
A MANCHURIAN DELUGE—A PASSENGER CART—AN ACCIDENT
It surprised me much to find that only one foreign resident had visited Mukden, which is only 120 miles distant by a road which is traversable in winter, and is accessible by river during the summer and autumn in from eight to ten days. I left Newchwang on the 3rd of July, and though various circumstances were unpropitious, reached Mukden in eight days, being able to avoid many of the windings of the Liau by sailing over an inundation.
The kindly foreign community lent me necessaries for the journey, but even with these the hold of a “pea-boat” was not luxurious. My camp-bed took up the greater part of it, and the roof was not much above my head. The descent into the hold and the ascent were difficult, and when wind and rain obliged me to close the front, it was quite dark, cockroaches swarmed, and the smell of the bilge water was horrible. I was very far from well when I started, and in two days was really ill, yet I would not have missed the special interest of that journey for anything, or its solitude, for Wong’s limited English counted for nothing and involved no conversational effort.
For some distance above Newchwang or Ying-tzŭ, as far as the real Newchwang, there is a complication of muddy rivers hurrying through vast reed beds, the resort of wild fowl, with here and there a mud bank with a mud hovel or two upon it. At that time reed beds and partially inundated swamps stretched away nearly to the horizon, which is limited in the far distance by the wavy blue outline of some low hills.
We ran up the river till the evening of the second day before a fair wind, and then were becalmed on a reedy expanse swarming with mosquitos. The mercury was at 89° in the hold that night. I had severe fever, with racking pains in my head, back, and limbs, and in the morning the stamping of the junkmen to and fro, along the narrow strip of deck outside the roof, was hardly bearable. Wong had used up the ample supply of water, and there was nothing wherewith to quench thirst but the brown, thick water of the Liau, the tea made with which resembled peasoup.
On the morning of the third day it began to rain and blow, and for the next awful four days the wind and rain never ceased. The oiled paper which had been tacked over the roof of the boat was torn into strips by the violence of the winds, which forced the rain through every chink. I lay down that night with the mercury at 80°, woke feeling very cold, but, though surprised, fell asleep again. Woke again much colder, feeling as if my feet were bandaged together, extricated myself with difficulty, struck a light, and got up into 6 inches of a mixture of bilge water and rain water, with an overpowering stench, in or on which all things were sunk or floating. Wondered again at being so very cold, found the temperature at 84°, and that I had been sleeping under a wringing sheet in soaked clothing and on soaked sacking, under a soaked mosquito net, and that there was not a dry article in the hold. For the next three days and nights things remained in the same condition, and though I was really ill I had to live in wet clothing and drink the “liquid cholera” of the flood, all the wells being submerged.