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From the creek they tramped nearly two miles, through the dark gravel-banks of the railroad cut, across the high trestle over Joralemon River where Gertie had to be coaxed from stringer to stringer. They stopped only when a gopher in a clearing demanded attention.
The entire bed of the river was filled from rim to rim with a rolling brown flood. The bars, sand-spits, gravel-banks had all disappeared. Whole trees bobbed and sank and raised skeleton arms or tangled roots as they were swept along by the current or caught back by the eddies; and underneath the roar of the waters we heard the dull rumbling and crunching of boulders rolled beneath the flood.
Any traveller who has visited the Vallais may see the Rhone at work in its first stage. In the second he can trace the river from below Lyons, and see the thousand gravel-banks formed, swept away, and reformed, at every flood, that mark the course of the river in its second stage. By the time the Rhone has reached Arles all its gravel has been champed up and reduced to impalpable mud.
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.
To work rock in mining parlance is to be skillful in boring Earth's stony husk after mineral. It is to be proficient in sledging, drilling and blasting. The Chinaman seemed to have no aptitude for this labor. He was content to use his pick and shovel in the gravel-banks: metallic veins of gold, silver or copper he left entirely to the white man.
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