IRON COVER OF BOTTOMLESS WELL.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.
On another voyage we stopped at Fengtu for the night as we were proceeding up-river. It was when the chapels and houses throughout Szechuan were being burnt down, and missionaries flying for their lives, though no one was killed, happily. All the people on the foreshore rushed down to look at our boat, brandishing bamboos; and our servants said they had to shout very loud and very energetically that we were not missionaries in order to save our lives. The principal official sent down additional soldiers to guard us through the night. But it was impossible to be frightened. For that, I think, was really the very hottest night I have lived through; even lying on the roof of the boat it was impossible to do anything but gasp.
AT FENGTU.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.
Beyond Fengtu are the colossal statues of the philanthropic beancurd-seller and his wife, hewn out of the living rock, and sitting in caves made in the rock out of which they are hewn. Beyond them, again, comes a very pleasant country of farmsteads, and great shade-trees, and caves in the rock-face, once inhabited, it is believed, by the aborigines, who were there before the Chinese came. But if so, how well and neatly they are shaped! And why did people who could square doorways so neatly live in such uncomfortable, dark places as caves? People all say to one another that these caves would be very interesting subjects for study; but so far no one has studied them.
Thus, by many windings, and past great bridges, and up more rapids, at last we arrive at terrible, long reaches of rocks; and then at Chungking, the commercial capital of Szechuan, China's westernmost, and one of its largest and richest provinces. But Chungking deserves a chapter to itself, especially as it is the only Chinese city within whose walls I have lived for years. Some people call thus living "doing a term of fortress." A Chinese city is certainly very like a prison.