On the Yangtze River, houseboats have a cabin with bunks, table, and a mast, that should go up and down so that you can get under bridges made of long blocks of stone; they also have a huge sail made of matting. You put your cook, coolies, and provisions aboard, get your passport, and are off through merchant ships, junks, men-of-war, sampans, etc., up the river, and through the pass where they saw the fire from Shanghai and got up in time to save the captain of a craft where the men had been tied to the masts and the ships set on fire by pirates. Sometimes the coolies pull you with a rope; sometimes push you with poles; sometimes you sail. When you please you land and shoot pheasants scared out of Chinese graves (big and little mounds covered with reeds etc.) by bones thrown in, plenty of bones, remains of bamboo stockades used in the Taeping rebellion still standing. There are duck, plover, and snipe; and now and then you pass through a Chinese village. Natives stare and big dogs get excited. It is as well to keep a watch, at night particularly when near any soldier junks, as we were at Foochow.