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Updated: June 9, 2025
Unlike the crossing of the Yangtse at Lung-kai, where we were the only ones to be ferried over, we found ourselves here in a crowd of coolies and ponies impatiently waiting their turn, for we were now on a main travelled road. Sitting at ease in my chair I enjoyed the grand views up and down the river, which here swings out from the cliffs in a splendid curve.
The other is that instead of two divisions in China, there are at least five, two parties in both the north and south, and another in the central or Yangtse region, each one of the five splitting up again more or less on factional and provincial lines. And so far as the future is concerned, probably this last statement is the most significant of the three.
The journey was, of course, in no sense one of exploration; it consisted simply of a voyage of 1500 miles up the Yangtse River, followed by a quiet, though extended, excursion of another 1500 miles along the great overland highway into Burma, taken by one who spoke no Chinese, who had no interpreter or companion, who was unarmed, but who trusted implicitly in the good faith of the Chinese.
Until recently, British subjects were at liberty to carry on business at but eighteen ports in China. To these must be now added Shansi on the Yangtse, between Ichang and Hankow; Hangchow and Souchow, two inland cities near Shanghai; Woochow and Sanshui on the West River and Ssumao and Lungchow, in the south.
At Hongkong the sailing is on a bright, blue sea, whether in the magnificent harbour or amongst the numerous lovely islands, while at Shanghai it is on the muddy waters of the Whangpoo, which, except for the fact that it is the harbour of this thriving settlement, where scores of vessels of all sizes and nationalities ride at anchor or are berthed alongside wharves, is a small and uninteresting river flowing into the estuary of the Yangtse.
These enormous rafts, composed chiefly of bamboos and pines, generally come from the forests of Hunan, and after crossing the Tongting lake float down the Yangtse to places where wood is scarce and a good market obtains. They vary in size, but sometimes are a hundred yards in length by twenty in breadth, and draw probably from ten to twenty feet.
Their conclusion is that it is a question of vital importance, a matter of commercial life and death, for England to maintain and consolidate herself in the Yangtse basin, which cannot possibly be done except by an effective occupation of the upper Yangtse, and by developing in every possible way her communications along that watercourse, and by the West River from Hongkong, also by railway connection with Upper Burmah and through that province with India.
But a coolie whose ancestors had towed junks up the eleventh cataract of the Yangtse since before the birth of Christ inevitably inherits one character in large degree, namely, the character of patience. This patience was Ah Kim's. At the end of five years, his compulsory servitude over, thin as ever in body, in bank account he lacked just ten trade dollars of possessing a thousand trade dollars.
Moreover, above the junction the Yangtse is not navigable, owing to the swift current and obstructing rocks, while the Min serves as one of China's great waterways, bearing the products of the famous Chengtu plain to the eastern markets. After leaving the ferry we followed for some miles the dry bed of a river whose name I could not learn.
What matters it to Nature if a mother at Chefoo or on the banks of the Yangtse offers her bowl of rice with burning incense at some shrine and prays for the return of her son that has fallen unknown for all time on the plains along the Tola, where his bones will dry beneath the rays of Nature's dissipating fire and be scattered by her winds over the sands of the prairie?
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