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Updated: June 9, 2025
On the Yangtse I have seen them in mid-stream floating down in compact masses with the racing current and surrounded by their guardians in tubs, who, armed with long bamboos, smartly whack any bird which may happen to stray away from the flock until it rejoins its companions.
British steamers swarm throughout the China seas and up the Yangtse for a thousand miles to Ichang, and it is in controlling the working of these vessels, in importing and selling manufactured goods and opium, in buying and exporting tea, silk and other products of the country, as well as in filling positions in Government services or any professional calling that agents, merchants, officials and the professional classes find employment, so that if in exile we surround ourselves with such luxuries and enjoyments as are reserved for the wealthy at home it is because they are ready to hand at but little cost, and that they serve in a degree to compensate us for the sweet pleasures of home-life which are forfeited by those who leave Old England to push their ways in distant lands.
In autumn, when the waters of the Yangtse commence to fall and the inundated districts along its banks become dry, the plain at Hankow affords excellent riding, where for miles one can swing along at a hand-gallop without once having to draw rein.
They were yelling with discord, but worked together as one man. In the afternoon we were at Feng-tu-hsien, a flourishing river port, one of the principal outlets of the opium traffic of the Upper Yangtse. Next day we were at Fuchou, the other opium port, whose trade in opium is greater still than that of Feng-tu-hsien.
When Prince Kung learned from Lord Elgin the full extent of the success of the Taepings on the Yangtse, of which the officials at Pekin seemed to possess a very imperfect and inaccurate knowledge, the Manchu authorities realized that it was a vital question for them to reassert their authority without further delay, but on beginning to put their new resolve into practice they soon experienced that the position of the Taepings in 1861 differed materially from what it was in 1857.
The sources of the Yangtse are to be found in the mountain ranges of Thibet, and as during winter and early spring the deep snows of those lofty regions lie icebound and the great river is fed only by local rains, its waters dwindle in volume until they find a level forty feet below that of summer and autumn, when torrid heat and torrential rains thaw the snows in Central Asia and fill the river-bed with a thick, brown current which, after overflowing into and filling all lakes, tributaries and unprotected lowlands in the Yangtse valley, sweeps eastwards to the ocean, a foaming torrent of irresistible force.
and flourishing delta of the Yangtse Kiang, and had become a formidable force. In 1853 they captured Nankin, which was henceforth their capital. The Tien Wang, established himself in a splendid palace, and proclaimed his new evangel.
It is, finally, the conviction of all competent students of the subject that it is from Burmah, on the one hand, and from Shanghai and Hongkong on the other, that England must, by the aid of steam applied overland and by water, practically occupy the upper Yangtse region, which will be found to be the key to a dominant position in China.
Teeny-bits, Neil Durant and Ted Norris sat without moving; their eyes were on the red and yellow fireplace flames, but what they saw was a bit of the old Chinese Empire, in-land on a tributary of the Yangtse and a bungalow at Tung-sha.
As a matter of fact, the British government has done little or nothing to establish overland railway communication from Burmah to China, or to reach China "from behind," as Lord Salisbury called it; and the Upper Yangtse, the main artery of China, has remained practically unopened. Such, at least, was the situation a few months ago.
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