ICHANG TO WAN-HSIEN, THROUGH THE YANGTSE GORGES
Just before Ichang is reached, the appearance of the Yangtse valley
undergoes a sudden change. The great flat plains of the Lower Yangtse
are left behind, and rugged hills creep gradually up to the river's
edge. Ichang owes its importance to the fact that it is situated at
the eastern entrance of the great gorges of the Upper Yangtse, at the
highest point of the river which is at present attainable by steamers.
Its distance from the mouth of the Yangtse is almost exactly 1,000
miles. Its situation on the left bank of the river, facing a striking
mountain the shape and size of which are said to be almost identical
with those of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, is very picturesque. The
town is not large, the population being barely 40,000, including about
thirty or forty Europeans, the majority of whom are missionaries. There
are also consular and customs officials, and a few merchants. The port
has been opened to foreign trade for many years, but there has not as
yet been any great commercial boom. It is, indeed, little but a port of
trans-shipment. The main item in the out-going trade is native opium,
for the poppy is grown very extensively in the valleys above Ichang.
The town will therefore be considerably affected by the new anti-opium
regulations.
[Sidenote: NAVIGATION ON UPPER YANGTSE]
Cargoes arriving by steamer and destined for the markets of the rich
province that lies beyond the gorges are at Ichang transferred to large
river junks. These junks, if they are fortunate enough to escape the
manifold dangers of rocks and rapids, are hauled through the gorges
by small armies of trackers, and take a month at least--sometimes far
more--to cover the 400 miles between Ichang and Chung-king. With a
favourable wind they can travel under their own sail in the smooth
water between the rapids, but even then, owing to the strong current,
the rate of progress is slow.
The right of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtse from Ichang to
Chung-king and Hsü-chou-fu (Sui-fu) has existed since 1894, but the
problem of the rapids is still an unsolved one, and steamboats can
only attempt the journey at a great risk. The dangerous portion is
the 200 miles between Ichang and Wan-hsien. Mr Archibald Little
successfully navigated his _Lee-chuen_ through the gorges in 1898, but
few attempts have since been made to connect Ichang and Chung-king by
steam, though it is obvious that owing to the great cost and risk of
the present methods of carrying on trade with the markets of Ssuch'uan,
the development of a flourishing trade with that exceedingly rich and
prosperous province is a matter of great difficulty. France, no doubt,
hopes that by the extension of her Yunnan railway beyond Yunnan-fu
the trade of Ssuch'uan will to some extent be diverted to Tongking
and Haiphong, but she is, of course, fully cognisant of the fact that
once the problem of the Yangtse rapids is solved by engineering skill,
any such trade as she may have captured will inevitably find its way
back to its natural channel. It is to be hoped, therefore, in the
interests of China and Great Britain, that the problem will before long
be tackled in real earnest by competent persons; it is certainly not
one on which the opinion of amateurs is of any value. British river
gun-boats have surmounted the obstacles on several occasions,[6] and
a couple of such vessels are now kept in permanent commission in the
tranquil waters between Wan-hsien and Hsü-chou-fu. In summer they also
ascend the Min river (which enters the Yangtse at Hsü-chou-fu) as far
as Chia-ting, a distance from Shanghai of about 1,680 miles.
[Sidenote: CHINESE RED-BOATS]
Apart from the serious question of the rapids, there is no doubt that
the Yangtse, with its tributaries, forms a magnificent system of
navigable rivers. Not only can gun-boats ascend the Min river as far
as Chia-ting, but native craft further ascend at all times of the year
as far as Ch'êng-tu, the capital of Ssuch'uan, a distance of 133 miles
above Chia-ting, and over 1,800 miles from Shanghai. The main stream
of the river known to Europeans as the Yangtse is navigable only to
P'ing-shan, 40 miles above Hsü-chou-fu, making a total distance from
the Pacific Ocean of about 1,600 miles. It is on account of the shorter
navigable distance of the main stream that the Chinese popularly regard
the so-called Min as the true Great River. Chia-ting is within a day's
journey of Mount Omei, and from the summit of Mount Omei one can see
the Great Snow Mountains which form the eastern buttress of the Tibetan
plateau. It is thus possible to penetrate by steam-boat or other vessel
so far into the interior of China as to be within sight of her western
boundary. This fact may surely be adduced in support of the contention
that China possesses the finest system of navigable waterways in the
world.
At Ichang, through the kind assistance of Mr H. H. Fox, British Consul
at that port, and by the courtesy of the local Chinese officials, I
procured a "red-boat" to convey myself and my faithful bull-terrier
Jim up the rapids and through the gorges to Wan-hsien. The so-called
red-boats are Chinese Government life-boats. There are several
stationed in the neighbourhood of each of the most dangerous rapids,
and they are manned by skilful and daring water-men. Every year a
large percentage of the trading junks are wrecked in the rapids, and
the annual loss of life, great as it is, would be appalling if it were
not for the red-boats. This life-saving institution is maintained
by Government with the assistance of voluntary contributions. A
subscription towards the up-keep of the service is granted annually by
the British Admiralty. There is no institution in China which reflects
more credit on the government of the country, and is more deserving of
unqualified praise.
In a red-boat I was more cramped in space than I should have been in
one of the large house-boats usually chartered by European travellers,
but my rate of progress was much more speedy. My only shelter was a
mat-awning, open at both ends, and as the thermometer rarely went above
45°, and at night often went down to 36°, I should have suffered some
inconvenience from the cold had I not been able to exercise myself
by scrambling along the rocks and boulders ahead of my trackers. The
red-boat in which I travelled was, of course, specially detached for my
use and exempted from the performance of its ordinary duties, though
for part of the way it acted as escort to a naval officer who was going
up the river in one of the ordinary house-boats to join his ship.
[Sidenote: YANGTSE GORGES]
So many descriptions--good, bad, and indifferent--of the wonders of
the Yangtse gorges have already been thrust into the hands of a more
or less grateful public, that most of my readers may be glad to learn
that I do not intend to add to the number. The travellers who in
recent years have endeavoured to emulate the excellent accounts of
such pioneers as Mr Archibald Little are so numerous that I would in
all diffidence suggest to those who may hereafter desire to publish
their "impressions" of the gorges, that it would be a graceful act
on their part to pay a small fine--let it be a large one if the
public receives their work with cordiality--towards the funds of the
life-boat service. It would certainly be impossible to find a worthier
object for their generosity. All I will venture to say myself--though
I have already paid my fine--is that no description of the scenery of
the gorges can do justice to the reality. For though I have beheld
scenery more beautiful and quite as grand, I never saw anything in
my travels that filled me with a deeper sense of awe. Perhaps one
of the secrets of the fascination of the gorges is the ever-present
contrast between the dumb forces of nature and evanescent humanity.
For ages past human muscle has matched itself in a brave struggle
with those titanic forces. The very rocks themselves, the standing
symbol of changelessness, reveal something of the history of this
unending strife. The smooth grooves worn deep into the jagged summits
of innumerable crags have been scooped out by the ropes hauled by a
hundred generations of dead trackers, and just above the water-line
the deep holes in the hard lime-stone made by the poles of millions of
toiling junkmen in past centuries are still used as hooks and points
of leverage by their descendants of to-day. When it is remembered that
more than a hundred trackers are sometimes required to haul a single
junk against the current of the greater rapids, and that a junk may
take half a day in covering a distance of 200 yards, some idea will be
formed of the permanent difficulties that confront, and always have
confronted, the indomitable Chinese navigator on these inland waters.
Much has been written by former travellers on the subject of the
terribly hard lives led by the Yangtse trackers, but I am not sure that
the degradation of the tracker and the wretchedness of his life have
not been greatly over-stated. Hard as the work is, the trackers' mode
of life can be by no means unhealthy, and their daily food is, from
the Chinese point of view, both plentiful and good. Better than all,
their work is in its way interesting, and of such a nature that it can
never become really monotonous. That they take a genuine satisfaction
in its accomplishment, quite apart from the reward they are to receive,
seemed to me, as I watched them at their labours, an obvious fact. I
fancy that Ruskin would have supported the view that the tracker's
lot is by no means so pitiable as that of myriads of factory hands in
the hideous industrial centres of modern Europe. Personally, if I had
to choose between hauling junks over rapids in the magnificent gorges
of the Yangtse, and pulling cranks and levers in a dismal Lancashire
factory, I should not for a moment hesitate in my choice: and I should
not choose the cranks and levers.
My journey from Ichang to Wan-hsien occupied eleven days. We started on
2nd February, reached Pu-tai K'ou (the boundary between the provinces
of Hupei and Ssuch'uan) on the 6th, passed through the Fêng Hsiang
gorge--perhaps the grandest of all the defiles--on the 8th, and beached
ourselves under the walls of the city of Wan-hsien on the morning
of the 12th. Here I paid off my hardy boatmen, and prepared for my
overland journey to Ch'êng-tu.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] It was accomplished very successfully by a British river gun-boat
as recently as the summer of 1907.