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The Yangtze surpasses in importance to the Celestial Empire what the Mississippi is to America, and yet even in China there are thousands of resident foreigners who know no more about this great river than the average Smithfield butcher. Ask ten men in Fleet Street or in Wall Street where Ichang is, and nine will be unable to tell you.
We are now in waters which no Englishman, as far as is known, has ever seen. Lord Amherst passed into the Poyang Lake through the channel I described yesterday, and so on to Canton. We are proceeding up the river Yangtze. Hue came down this route, but by land. I mentioned the sand-drifts two days ago.
Nanking became a sort of subsidiary capital. This transfer of the capital to the north, as the result of the victory of the military party and Buddhists allied to them, produced a new element of instability: the north was of military importance, but the Yangtze region remained the economic centre of the country. The interests of the gentry of the Yangtze region were injured by the transfer.
Through their counsel Chu changed from the leader of a popular rising into a fighter against the dynasty. Of all the peasant leaders he was now the only one pursuing a definite aim. He marched first against Nanking, the great city of central China, and captured it with ease. He then crossed the Yangtze, and conquered the rich provinces of the south-east.
He is an able general; not long ago, nominally at the bidding of Peking, he established his authority on the Yangtze and in Hunan, thereby dealing a blow to the hopes of Canton. If so, China might have a breathing-space, and a breathing-space is all that is needed. The economic life of China, except in the Treaty Ports and in a few regions where there are mines, is still wholly pre-industrial.
Considering the small area available for cultivation there are a considerable number of inhabitants, who have gathered into villages and seldom live in isolated houses as in the Yangtze valley.
The mafus even refused to try the direct route across the mountains to Wei-hsi and insisted on going southward to the Shih-ku ferry and up the Yangtze River on the main caravan route. It was a long trip and we looked forward with no pleasure to eight days of hard riding.
After my manuscript went forward to my publishers, permission to travel and protection were granted to British subjects again on the main road leading up to the Yangtze Valley.
Russia built the Manchurian Railway, connecting Peking with the Siberian Railway and with Europe. Germany built the Shantung Railway, from Tsingtau to Tsinanfu. The French built a railway in the south. England sought to obtain a monopoly of the railways in the Yangtze valley.
We were three days going the 600 miles. The Yangtze is the third largest river in the world and navigable 400 miles beyond Hankow, or 1000 miles in all. It would be navigable much farther but for a series of waterfalls. Nearly thirty miles wide toward the mouth, its muddy current discolors the ocean's blue forty miles out in the Pacific, I am told.
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