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The Manchus guessed Wu San-kui's plan, and in 1673, after every effort at accommodation had failed, open war came. Wu San-kui made himself emperor, and the Manchus marched against him. Meanwhile, the Chinese gentry of the Yangtze region had come to terms with the Manchus, and they gave Wu San-kui no help.
I am a good deal puzzled about my departure. The opening of the Yangtze and the Rebel question are serious matters, and I do not like to leave them unsettled: on the other hand, I can hardly, even if I were so inclined, remain here till they are settled. I think it will end in my staying till the next mail comes in from the North. Sunday, December 16th.
The greater part of the roads to be traversed now were constructed on projecting slopes above rivers and torrents, affluents of the Yangtze, and cross a region upon which the troubled appearance of the mountains that bristle over it stamps the impress of a severe kind of beauty.
At first the advance went well. The horsemen from the north, however, were men of the mountain country, and in the soggy plains of the Yangtze region, cut up by hundreds of water-courses and canals, they suffered from climatic and natural conditions to which they were unaccustomed. Their main strength was still in cavalry; and they came to grief.
Fifty pounds of this sugar were ordered, and sugar that dirty, brown sticky stuff got into everything on board my fingers are sticky even as I write and no less than exactly one-half went down to the bottom of the Yangtze. Travelers by houseboat on the Upper Yangtze should have some knowledge of commissariat. Getting away was a tedious business.
Villagers have appropriated the public slabs and small boulders which comprised the wretched thoroughfare; reminiscent puddles tell you the tale, and the badness of the road renders it necessary for the traveler to be out of bed a little earlier than usual to face the ordeal. The road to-day has been practically as bad as walking along the sides of the Yangtze.
The small farmers who were squeezed out, migrated to the south. Absentee landlords in cities relied partly on migratory, seasonal labour supplied by small farmers from Chekiang who came to the Yangtze area after they had finished their own harvest. More and more, vegetables and mulberries or cotton were planted in the vicinity of the cities.
Humility and patience are the first requisites in traveling on the Upper Yangtze. Reader, for your sake I refrain from a description.
I had a moment of painful saisissement when I felt almost certain that we should run into my dear colleague Gros, who had grounded in a little gunboat at one of the worst bends of the river. We only saved him by dropping an anchor from the stern, and going backwards full speed. The Yangtze was bad enough, but we never used to go on at night, and there was no danger of collisions.
Our introduction, therefore, to the great Gorges of the Upper Yangtze to China what the Niagara Falls are to America was not remarkable for its placidity, albeit taken with as much complacency as the occasion allowed. I do not, however, intend to weary or to entertain the reader, as may be, by a long description of the Yangtze gorges.
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