"It is not reasonable that the noble Nicholas should laugh at his mean servant, for at the examination of his Hien he passed so creditably through the first two sacred books, that he would have obtained a government promotion but for the villain who destroyed his house. May his soul pass into the body of a rat!" said Chow gloomily.
"Pardon, O disappointed scholar. It was villainous to laugh, for it is a wise saying, 'that the well to do should sympathize with the unfortunate,'" said Nicholas, adding, as he took his cap, "But let us now seek for a passage-boat, for it is also wisely said, 'that the loiterer about the business of another is incapable of conducting his own affairs.'"
When they reached the river, they engaged a passage to Hang-tcheou, and having waited for a favorable tide, the barge was soon out of the river into a canal, upon which for days they proceeded, at times being pushed along by poles thrust into the water, at others, being drawn along by coolies, or porters, an employment that affords a means of existence to a vast portion of the population of China.
Tche-Kiang, through which they so leisurely traveled, is, perhaps, the most fertile and beautiful of the eighteen provinces of China, and large enough to contain the whole of Scotland and its adjacent islands. Besides rivers, it is watered by some sixty canals, which serve not only as an easy method of transit, but so to irrigate the great plains around that they yield crops of rice, pulse, and cotton, twice and sometimes thrice a year. It was pleasant to watch these canals pouring forth their sparkling limpid streams to lave the feet of the neighboring hills and mountains, which for many miles presented an aspect of singular beauty; some, like carved and nature painted pyramids, being wrought into terraces, which shot one out of the other, teeming with the yellow grain, cotton, or tea-trees, while others were thickly sprinkled with shady trees, which waved over sloping cemeteries of quaintly shaped tombs and temples. It was a charming picture—nature dressed to the verge of foppery—more, it was a glorious land, and smiling as if in pride at its power of blessing the human race—and more again, that its owners knew its worth and industriously stretched its blessings to the utmost.
Then the boat came to a dike, or sluice, and they were about to enter another canal at least fifteen feet beneath their level. To pass this, the barge was hoisted by Coolies up an inclined plain of freestone by means of ropes upon capstans and sheer strength of muscle, then gently let down a slope upon the other side into the water, a mode adopted to the present day to move even the largest vessels from canal to canal.
Thus pleasantly the young travelers were wafted through the province, now through vast plains of rice, then by the sides of great hills clustering with the tea-plant, on again through vast orchards of mulberry-trees and the useful and curious tallow-plant; then again through plantations of bamboo, that inseparable companion of the Chinaman from the cradle to the grave—for it receives the infant, corrects the boy, is the means of living for the man, and entwines the corpse. Then again they passed through towns and cities, swarming with busy workers at the silk-loom and multifarious handicrafts, and toiling children, women, and men in the fields, till they passed another dike, and then they were upon the beautiful lake Tsao-hou, about the naming of which the following pretty story is told:—
"Many years ago there lived a priest of the Taouist religion, who had obtained a reputation for his skill in magic. At the festival of the feast of dragon boats, the priest went to sport in the river in honor of his gods, but by some mischance he was drowned, and his body no where to be found. His dutiful daughter, Tsao-hou, a girl fourteen years of age, felt her father's loss so deeply that she wandered along the banks of the river for seventeen days and nights, weeping and wailing over her loss. At last she threw a large melon into the river, putting up the prayer, 'May this melon sink wherever the body of my father lieth.' With anxious eyes she watched the gourd as it floated on the surface of the stream, until it stopped at a certain spot where it sank. The poor damsel, frantic with grief, rushed to the place and plunged after it. She too was drowned, but five days afterward her lifeless trunk rose to the surface with her father's body in her embrace. Both were buried on the river bank, and in commemoration of that incident the name of the girl was given to the lake and a magnificent temple erected to her name."
On the sixth day they came to Chao-Hing, the Venice of China, where the canals are so numerous that any portion of the city may be reached by boats. Imagine a city with, in place of streets, one large network of water-roads, intersected with bridges, so light and fanciful that one could imagine them to have been blown together by the breath of fairies, and you will have some notion of Chao-Hing.
This city is celebrated alike for its silk-worms and book-worms. So great is the reputation of the scholars of Chao-Hing that they are sought for by the viceroys of provinces to fill government offices. Near to this city and not far from the mountain of Asses (so called from its being shaped in the form of that animal) is the sepulchre of the great Emperor Yu, the model sovereign of China.
This prince obtained the throne by having saved the empire from the deluge of water which in his time covered the lands; indeed, he must have been no common engineer, for in thirteen years, by unwearied labor, he leveled high mountains, embanked and confined great rivers within their channels, drained lakes and marshes, enclosed rapid torrents with banks, and divided rivers into canals, which not only gained a great extent of country, but rendered the whole more fertile. It was the great genius and wonderful energy of Yu that caused the reigning Emperor to choose him for his successor in preference to either of the four princes, his sons.