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The Whang-poo looked like the Thames, and the Shanghai Bund like the Embankment, when I embarked on board a Jap boat en route for Hankow, and thence to Ichang by a smaller steamer, on a dark, bitterly cold Saturday night, March 6th, 1909. I was to travel fifteen hundred miles up that greatest artery of China.
Most of these ports welcomed the new order of things; but at one, notably Hankow, difficulties arose, and Hart promptly started to clear them up. At the time of his going both Wuhu and Nanking, two cities on the Yangtsze, were still in the hands of the rebels, and the river-steamer captain warned his passengers that the ship would stop at Wuhu to get her papers from them.
Until recently, British subjects were at liberty to carry on business at but eighteen ports in China. To these must be now added Shansi on the Yangtse, between Ichang and Hankow; Hangchow and Souchow, two inland cities near Shanghai; Woochow and Sanshui on the West River and Ssumao and Lungchow, in the south.
They tell us we can go in this ship to Hankow and the Poyang Lake. We have found another rock beside us, and only think that this should not have been known by our Navy! November 18th. Eight P.M. At about 6 P.M. I was crossing on a plank over a gully, on my return from an expedition to Golden Island, when three rounds of cheers from the 'Furious, about a mile off, struck my ear.
It is gratifying to note that the negotiations for a loan to the Chinese Government for the construction of the trunk railway lines from Hankow southward to Canton and westward through the Yangtse Valley, known as the Hukuang Loan, were concluded by the representatives of the various financial groups in May last and the results approved by their respective governments.
That the danger had been real enough the deserted river proved; terror of these same revolutionaries had swept the usually busy waterway clean of craft, and nothing further disturbed the quiet but the hoarse honk of wild geese and the whirring of ducks' wings. At Hankow the Viceroy, Kwan Wen, was as friendly personally as he was obstinate officially.
Already in Shantung the same policy is being pursued and there are indications that it is being thought of in Fuhkien; whilst the infantry garrison which was quietly installed at Hankow 600 miles up the Yangtsze river at the time of the Revolution of 1911 is apparently to be made permanent.
Several towns were captured after more or less resistance, and Bayan bore down with all his force on the triple cities of Hankow, Wouchang, and Hanyang. Bayan concentrated all his efforts on the capture of Hanyang, while the Mongol navy under Artchu compelled the Chinese fleet to take refuge under the walls of Wouchang.
Margary started on his journey. He went up the Yangtsze river as far as Hankow in one of the huge American steamers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company. At Hankow, on September 4, 1874, he bade good-by to Western civilization, and, with a Chinese teacher and two or three Chinese attendants, began his trip through a vast and populous country, a terra incognita to Europeans.
But delays followed, and when the rioting occurred in Changsha he had not yet arrived at headquarters in Hankow. It was said openly that he was afraid. On my way north the train drew up one evening on a siding, and when I asked the reason I was told a special train was going south bearing His Excellency Tuan Fang to his post.
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