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It was here that the Woodlark, one of the magnificent gunboats which patrol the river to safeguard the interests of the Union Jack in this region, came to grief on her maiden trip to Chung-king. One of these strong swirls caught the ship's stern, rendering her rudders useless for the moment, and causing her to sheer broadside into the foaming rapid.
Situated at the head of Buffalo Mouth Reach, said to be more difficult to approach than even the Yeh T'an, because of the great swirls in the bay below. H.M.S. Woodlark came to grief here on her maiden trip up river. Encountered through the Urishan Hsia or Gloomy Mountain Gorge, particularly nasty during mid-river season.
He had a fairly sweet and pleasant voice, though rather hoarse: he played with his voice like a woodlark, twisting and turning it in incessant roulades and trills up and down the scale, continually returning to the highest notes, which he held and prolonged with special care. Then he would break off, and again suddenly take up the first motive with a sort of go-ahead daring.
Comfortable quarters; Apollo a cleverish, free-spoken fellow. 'I went, on the same afternoon, two miles of very bad road to visit the French priest, who is living here. More talk and of a very friendly nature. He has been eighteen months at San Cristoval, but knows not the language; at Woodlark Island, New Caledonia, &c. We talked in French and English.
But the mere English quotation-dealer, a mortal tiresome creature! still prevails, and figures still in certain circles of old blues, who are civil enough still to admire that wonderful memory of his which has a quotation ready for every thing you can say He usually prefaces or ends his quotations with "As the poet happily says," or, "as Nature's sweetest woodlark justly remarks;" or, "as the immortal Milton has it."
The bearded bulrushes were round them; the light played on the broad leaves of the docks and the red spikes of great beds of willow-herb; the water reflected the glowing sky, and close to its surface numbers of newly-come swallows whirled and dipped and darted, chasing gnats, whilst near at hand on a spray a little woodlark sang. The scene was fair, peaceful, full of placid and tender loveliness.
Struggles for mastery. Author saves boatman. Fifteen-knot current. Terrific labor on shore. Man nearly falls overboard. Straining hawsers carry us over safely. The merriment among the men. The thundering cataract. Trackers' chanting. Their life. "Pioneer" at the Yeh T'an. The Buffalo Mouth Reach. Story of the "Woodlark." How she was saved. Arrival at Kweifu. Difficulty in landing.
But above the tree-tops, rising, hovering, sinking, the woodlark is fluting, tender and low. Above the pastures outside the skylark sings as he alone can sing; and close by, from the hollies rings out the blackbird's tenor rollicking, audacious, humorous, all but articulate.
At the head of this reach H.M.S. Woodlark came to grief on her maiden trip. Half-way through is the boundary between Hu-peh and Szech'wan. They are of various shapes, made according to the nature of the part of the river on which they ply. The following is a rough list of the principal rapids to be negotiated on the river upward from Ichang.
Like the sundial in the first court, this bridge, leading to soft meadows beneath the shade of great trees, is attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. ST. CATHERINE'S. This college was founded in 1473 by Robert Woodlark, Chancellor of the University, and dedicated to "the glorious Virgin Martyr, St. Catherine of Alexandria." Undergraduate slang, alas! reduces all this to "Cat's."
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