In a red-boat I was more cramped in space than I should have been in one of the large house-boats usually chartered by European travellers, but my rate of progress was much more speedy. My only shelter was a mat-awning, open at both ends, and as the thermometer rarely went above 45°, and at night often went down to 36°, I should have suffered some inconvenience from the cold had I not been able to exercise myself by scrambling along the rocks and boulders ahead of my trackers. The red-boat in which I travelled was, of course, specially detached for my use and exempted from the performance of its ordinary duties, though for part of the way it acted as escort to a naval officer who was going up the river in one of the ordinary house-boats to join his ship.
YANGTSE GORGES
So many descriptions—good, bad, and indifferent—of the wonders of the Yangtse gorges have already been thrust into the hands of a more or less grateful public, that most of my readers may be glad to learn that I do not intend to add to the number. The travellers who in recent years have endeavoured to emulate the excellent accounts of such pioneers as Mr Archibald Little are so numerous that I would in all diffidence suggest to those who may hereafter desire to publish their "impressions" of the gorges, that it would be a graceful act on their part to pay a small fine—let it be a large one if the public receives their work with cordiality—towards the funds of the life-boat service. It would certainly be impossible to find a worthier object for their generosity. All I will venture to say myself—though I have already paid my fine—is that no description of the scenery of the gorges can do justice to the reality. For though I have beheld scenery more beautiful and quite as grand, I never saw anything in my travels that filled me with a deeper sense of awe. Perhaps one of the secrets of the fascination of the gorges is the ever-present contrast between the dumb forces of nature and evanescent humanity. For ages past human muscle has matched itself in a brave struggle with those titanic forces. The very rocks themselves, the standing symbol of changelessness, reveal something of the history of this unending strife. The smooth grooves worn deep into the jagged summits of innumerable crags have been scooped out by the ropes hauled by a hundred generations of dead trackers, and just above the water-line the deep holes in the hard lime-stone made by the poles of millions of toiling junkmen in past centuries are still used as hooks and points of leverage by their descendants of to-day. When it is remembered that more than a hundred trackers are sometimes required to haul a single junk against the current of the greater rapids, and that a junk may take half a day in covering a distance of 200 yards, some idea will be formed of the permanent difficulties that confront, and always have confronted, the indomitable Chinese navigator on these inland waters.
Much has been written by former travellers on the subject of the terribly hard lives led by the Yangtse trackers, but I am not sure that the degradation of the tracker and the wretchedness of his life have not been greatly over-stated. Hard as the work is, the trackers' mode of life can be by no means unhealthy, and their daily food is, from the Chinese point of view, both plentiful and good. Better than all, their work is in its way interesting, and of such a nature that it can never become really monotonous. That they take a genuine satisfaction in its accomplishment, quite apart from the reward they are to receive, seemed to me, as I watched them at their labours, an obvious fact. I fancy that Ruskin would have supported the view that the tracker's lot is by no means so pitiable as that of myriads of factory hands in the hideous industrial centres of modern Europe. Personally, if I had to choose between hauling junks over rapids in the magnificent gorges of the Yangtse, and pulling cranks and levers in a dismal Lancashire factory, I should not for a moment hesitate in my choice: and I should not choose the cranks and levers.
My journey from Ichang to Wan-hsien occupied eleven days. We started on 2nd February, reached Pu-tai K'ou (the boundary between the provinces of Hupei and Ssuch'uan) on the 6th, passed through the Fêng Hsiang gorge—perhaps the grandest of all the defiles—on the 8th, and beached ourselves under the walls of the city of Wan-hsien on the morning of the 12th. Here I paid off my hardy boatmen, and prepared for my overland journey to Ch'êng-tu.
[CHAPTER IV]
WAN-HSIEN TO CH'ÊNG-TU
Wan-hsien, though one of the most beautifully situated cities on the Yangtse, is, like most Chinese towns, more pleasing at a distance than close at hand. It lies on a slope at a bend of the river 200 miles above Ichang, and 1,200 miles from the ocean. It is not yet an open port, though I was shown a spot said to have been selected by the British consular authorities as the site of the future Consulate. The only resident Europeans are a few missionaries and a postal agent. The trade of the city is brisk and developing, for the numerous roads that lead from here into the interior of the province are much used by the native merchants of Ssuch'uan for the conveyance of their goods to the river. In time to come Wan-hsien will no doubt reap a large profit from its advantageous position at the point of contact of several main arteries of traffic.
At Wan-hsien I was very hospitably entertained for a day and a night by the Rev. J. C. Platt, of the China Inland Mission, who was also most courteous in assisting me in the engagement of coolies for the next stage of my journey.