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So I took a wu-pan, and the following night, when pulling into the shadows of the Sui-fu pagoda, cold and hungry, I cursed my luck that I had not broken down the useless etiquette which these Chinese officials extend towards foreigners, and taken the fellow's gunboat. The wu-pan, they swore to me, would be ready to leave at 3:30 a.m. the day following. My boy did not venture to sleep at all.

But, during the weary night watches, in a bed long since soaked through, and one's safest nightclothes now the stolid Burberry, with face protected by a twelve-cent umbrella, even one's curry and rice saturated to sap with the constant drip, and everything around one rendered cold and uncomfortable enough through a perforation in its slenderest part of the worn-out bamboo matting ah, it was then, then that one would have foregone with alacrity the dreams of the nomadic life of the wu-pan.

I had one more day in Chia-ting, visiting one or two temples and making the last arrangements for the trip down the river to Chung-king. Wisely helped by one of the American missionaries I secured a very comfortable wu-pan, for which I paid twenty-five dollars Mexican.

Since then I have seen more native life, and more native dirt! Gloom in Ichang Gorge. Lightning's effect. Travellers' fear. Impressive introduction to the Gorges. Boat gets into Yangtze fashion. Storm and its weird effects. Wu-pan: what it is. Heavenly electricity and its vagaries. Beautiful evening scene, despite heavy rain. Bedding soaked. Sleep in a Burberry. Gorges and Niagara Falls compared.

I merely lifted the quadruped bodily from my path and walked on. Chung-king people treated us well, and had it not been for their kindness the terrible three days spent still in our wu-pan on the crowded beach would have been more terrible still. At the Consulate we found Mr. Phillips, the Acting-Consul, ready packed up to go down to Shanghai, and Mr.

So in spite of the fact that "nobody travelled that way," or perhaps because of it, I, being a nobody, decided to try the humble wu-pan again, and through the efforts of one of the Christian helpers in the Friends' Mission I secured a very comfortable boat to take me and my reduced following to Ichang for twenty-five dollars Mexican.

The sun was sinking as I went on board the "wu-pan" or native boat lying in the stream outside the South Gate, and after carefully counting heads to make sure that the crew were all there, and that we were carrying no unauthorized passengers, we pushed off and the current took us rapidly out of sight of Chengtu. The trip to Chia-ting was very delightful.

I shifted my belongings directly from the wu-pan to the Kweilu, a Butterfield & Swire boat leaving the same evening. It was very comfortable, although crowded, as everything seems to be in China.

Our wu-pan was to get through the Gorges in as short a time as was possible, and for that reason we traveled in the discomfort of the smallest boat used to face the rapids. People entertaining the smallest idea of doing things travel in nothing short of a kwadze, the orthodox houseboat, with several rooms and ordinary conveniences. Ours was a wu-pan literally five boards.

From Kweifu to Wan Hsien there was the same kind of scenery the clear river winding among sand-flats and gravel-banks, with occasional stiff rapids. But after having been in a wu-pan for several days, suffering that which has been detailed, and much besides, the journey got a bit dreary.