A SKILFUL PILOT.
From this rapid the river rushes with considerable force south-east and south, till it is barred in the latter direction by a mountain whose bare cliffs, which have successfully resisted the attacks of the current, rise sheer from the angry waters. Foiled in its southern onset, it rushes east and at right angles to its former course, causing the most dangerous of all the rapids—of which the boatmen enumerate twenty—on this section of the river. It is called the Wan-wan T’an, or “Winding Rapid,” and well does it deserve the name. The river rushes swiftly to the cliffs, seemingly bent on carrying all with it. The confusion caused by the rush, the sharp bend and the sudden contraction is terrible, and we were, to all appearances, being swiftly hurried to destruction. But the eye of the pilot wavered not. His crew on the bow sweep and his old fan saved us from the cliffs. Once, however, the steersmen were slow in obeying an order, when the old man threw his fan on the deck, and with his clenched right hand repeatedly struck his left palm. The boat’s stern was within arm’s length of the cliffs! Our soldier fired a shot from a horse-pistol as we entered each rapid, whether in its honour or in its defiance I know not. The rapids passed, the pilot and his crew left us, and we re-shipped our men, escort, and animals, and proceeded to Sui Fu, which we did not reach till dark.
We spent the greater part of the 17th of July in hiring and inspecting a passenger boat to convey us to Ch’ung-k’ing, and in the afternoon everything was arranged for a start next morning. Towards night, word was brought to me that my horse-boy, who occupied a room in the inn immediately underneath my own, and who, I noticed, left the boat very much exhausted the previous night, was dangerously ill with dysentery, brought on by the hardships of the route. I at once consulted his wishes as to proceeding or remaining to recruit with one of my servants, who was a relative, to attend to him. He expressed a desire to proceed, and I ordered a chair to be in waiting next morning to take him on board. At two o’clock in the morning I was roused from my sleep by what appeared to be a shout in Chinese, “Your horse-boy is dead.” I got up and lit my candle; but there was neither sound nor movement anywhere. I went to bed again, and at daybreak my servant announced the poor man’s death. After the funeral—I buried him at Sui Fu—we embarked, and before noon of the 21st of July we lay off Ch’ung-k’ing, glad that our overland struggles were at an end.
CHAPTER XI.
CHINESE INSECT WHITE WAX.
References to insect white wax in Europe and China—Area of production—Chief wax-insect producing country—The insect tree—The insect “buffalo” beetle, or parasite—The insect scales—The transport of insects to the wax-producing districts—Method of transport—The wax tree—How insects are placed on the wax trees—Wax production—Collection of the wax—An ignominious ending—Insect metamorphosis—Uses of the wax—Quantity and value.
Although the substance called Chinese Insect White Wax has long been known in Europe, it is only within recent years that the mystery which has surrounded this remarkable industry has been cleared up. Amongst Europeans, we find Martini in his Novus Atlas Sinensis—a work descriptive of the Chinese Empire, published in 1655—mentioning alba cera as a product of the Hu-kwang provinces, and of the province of Kwangsi. Again, Gabriel de Magalhaes, in his “Nouvelle Rélation de la Chine,” published in 1668, states that white wax is produced in the provinces of Hunan, Hupeh, and Shantung; while in the “Lettres Edificantes,” published in 1752, Père Chanseaume has a “Memoire sur la cire d’arbre,” or tree wax. In the “Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences” of 1840, Stanislas Julien adds some notes on tree wax and the insects which produce it, and quotes from Chinese authors on the same subject; and in volume XII. of the Pharmaceutical Journal, published in 1853, there is an article by Daniel Hanbury entitled “The Insect White Wax of China.” More recently, Fortune, the two delegates of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce who ascended the River Yang-tsze into Western China in 1868, Baron von Richthofen, and Gill, have all alluded to the subject; and Mr. Baber, while he held the post of Her Majesty’s Agent in Western China, wrote a special and very interesting report on Insect White Wax, to which, as his successor, I had free access. In 1880, Père Rathouis published at Shanghai a short memoir on the white wax insect.
As early as 1522, this wax is mentioned in Chinese books; but at that time the idea seems to have been prevalent that the insects, by some mysterious process of metamorphosis, were themselves converted into a white substance and did not excrete the wax.