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My readers are probably familiar with Messrs. Huc and Gabet's account of a herd of these animals being frozen fast in the head-waters of the Yangtsekiang river. There is a noble specimen in the British Museum not yet set up, and another is preparing for exhibition in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham.
But such an adventure not merely implied a want of prudence and knowledge, it could only be attempted by a breach of their own promises. When Admiral Hope had sailed up the Yangtsekiang and visited Nanking, he demanded and received from Tien Wang, the Taeping king or leader, a promise that the Taeping forces should not advance within a radius of thirty miles of Shanghai.
This work, necessary in itself for many reasons, proved of incalculable value to him in the operations which he eventually undertook and carried out to a successful issue against the rebels. His own letters show how thoroughly he fulfilled his instructions, and how his surveys ended in his complete mastery of the topography of the region between the Grand Canal, the sea, and the Yangtsekiang:
The anti-foreign outbreak along the Yangtsekiang, in the summer of 1891, was an unpleasant incident, from which at one time it looked as if serious consequences might follow; but the ebullition fortunately passed away without an international crisis, and it may be hoped that the improved means of exercising diplomatic pressure at Pekin will render these attacks less frequent, and their settlement and redress more rapid.
We still thread our way close inshore through innumerable islands. One of them stands up stiff and straight, pointing like an obelisk to the sky. It is called the Finger Rock. We notice, too, very frequently, the white lighthouses, kept very clean. Then we go through a pass, two miles wide, called "Steep Island Pass," and are into the mouth of the Yangtsekiang River.
The expulsion of the Taepings from the Shanghai district and from Ningpo had done something towards the success of this project, but they still held Hangchow and the line of the Yangtsekiang to within ten miles of the entrance of the Woosung River on which Shanghai stands.
His object remained the same, but instead of marching direct to it across the Yangtsekiang he took the advice of the Sung general, arid attacked the fortress of Sianyang on the Han River, with the object of making himself supreme on that stream, and wresting from the Sungs the last first-class fortress they possessed in the northwest.
In 1366, Choo, having carefully made all the necessary preparations for war on a large scale, dispatched from Fankin two large armies to conquer the provinces north of the Yangtsekiang, which were all that remained in the possession of the Mongols.
The strategy on which Major Gordon at once decided, and from which he never deviated, was to cut off the Taeping communications with the sea and the river Yangtsekiang, whence they were able to obtain supplies of ammunition and arms from little-scrupulous foreign traders.
On breaking up from before Changsha they succeeded in seizing a sufficient number of junks and boats to cross the great inland lake of Tungting, and on reaching the Yangtsekiang at Yochow they found that the imperial garrison had fled at the mere mention of their approach.
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