ICHANG TO WAN-HSIEN, THROUGH THE YANGTSE GORGES

Just before Ichang is reached, the appearance of the Yangtse valley undergoes a sudden change. The great flat plains of the Lower Yangtse are left behind, and rugged hills creep gradually up to the river's edge. Ichang owes its importance to the fact that it is situated at the eastern entrance of the great gorges of the Upper Yangtse, at the highest point of the river which is at present attainable by steamers. Its distance from the mouth of the Yangtse is almost exactly 1,000 miles. Its situation on the left bank of the river, facing a striking mountain the shape and size of which are said to be almost identical with those of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, is very picturesque. The town is not large, the population being barely 40,000, including about thirty or forty Europeans, the majority of whom are missionaries. There are also consular and customs officials, and a few merchants. The port has been opened to foreign trade for many years, but there has not as yet been any great commercial boom. It is, indeed, little but a port of trans-shipment. The main item in the out-going trade is native opium, for the poppy is grown very extensively in the valleys above Ichang. The town will therefore be considerably affected by the new anti-opium regulations.

Cargoes arriving by steamer and destined for the markets of the rich province that lies beyond the gorges are at Ichang transferred to large river junks. These junks, if they are fortunate enough to escape the manifold dangers of rocks and rapids, are hauled through the gorges by small armies of trackers, and take a month at least—sometimes far more—to cover the 400 miles between Ichang and Chung-king. With a favourable wind they can travel under their own sail in the smooth water between the rapids, but even then, owing to the strong current, the rate of progress is slow.

The right of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtse from Ichang to Chung-king and HsÜ-chou-fu (Sui-fu) has existed since 1894, but the problem of the rapids is still an unsolved one, and steamboats can only attempt the journey at a great risk. The dangerous portion is the 200 miles between Ichang and Wan-hsien. Mr Archibald Little successfully navigated his Lee-chuen through the gorges in 1898, but few attempts have since been made to connect Ichang and Chung-king by steam, though it is obvious that owing to the great cost and risk of the present methods of carrying on trade with the markets of Ssuch'uan, the development of a flourishing trade with that exceedingly rich and prosperous province is a matter of great difficulty. France, no doubt, hopes that by the extension of her Yunnan railway beyond Yunnan-fu the trade of Ssuch'uan will to some extent be diverted to Tongking and Haiphong, but she is, of course, fully cognisant of the fact that once the problem of the Yangtse rapids is solved by engineering skill, any such trade as she may have captured will inevitably find its way back to its natural channel. It is to be hoped, therefore, in the interests of China and Great Britain, that the problem will before long be tackled in real earnest by competent persons; it is certainly not one on which the opinion of amateurs is of any value. British river gun-boats have surmounted the obstacles on several occasions,6 and a couple of such vessels are now kept in permanent commission in the tranquil waters between Wan-hsien and HsÜ-chou-fu. In summer they also ascend the Min river (which enters the Yangtse at HsÜ-chou-fu) as far as Chia-ting, a distance from Shanghai of about 1,680 miles.

Apart from the serious question of the rapids, there is no doubt that the Yangtse, with its tributaries, forms a magnificent system of navigable rivers. Not only can gun-boats ascend the Min river as far as Chia-ting, but native craft further ascend at all times of the year as far as Ch'Êng-tu, the capital of Ssuch'uan, a distance of 133 miles above Chia-ting, and over 1,800 miles from Shanghai. The main stream of the river known to Europeans as the Yangtse is navigable only to P'ing-shan, 40 miles above HsÜ-chou-fu, making a total distance from the Pacific Ocean of about 1,600 miles. It is on account of the shorter navigable distance of the main stream that the Chinese popularly regard the so-called Min as the true Great River. Chia-ting is within a day's journey of Mount Omei, and from the summit of Mount Omei one can see the Great Snow Mountains which form the eastern buttress of the Tibetan plateau. It is thus possible to penetrate by steam-boat or other vessel so far into the interior of China as to be within sight of her western boundary. This fact may surely be adduced in support of the contention that China possesses the finest system of navigable waterways in the world.

At Ichang, through the kind assistance of Mr H. H. Fox, British Consul at that port, and by the courtesy of the local Chinese officials, I procured a "red-boat" to convey myself and my faithful bull-terrier Jim up the rapids and through the gorges to Wan-hsien. The so-called red-boats are Chinese Government life-boats. There are several stationed in the neighbourhood of each of the most dangerous rapids, and they are manned by skilful and daring water-men. Every year a large percentage of the trading junks are wrecked in the rapids, and the annual loss of life, great as it is, would be appalling if it were not for the red-boats. This life-saving institution is maintained by Government with the assistance of voluntary contributions. A subscription towards the up-keep of the service is granted annually by the British Admiralty. There is no institution in China which reflects more credit on the government of the country, and is more deserving of unqualified praise.

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.

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.