Lawrence Dundas

“ Could you want a better example of that class of men so common all over China "who are driven by the constant and chronic reappearance of the wolf at their door to spend their life in an everlasting grind"?
Trackers and boatmen alike are endowed with two remarkable characteristics—an invariable cheerfulness and good-humour in spite of their life of unceasing toil, and a colossal and ineradicable superstition. ”

“ When we take into consideration the difference in the price of labour between Manchester and Wan Hsien, and the heavy freights which Manchester goods are called upon to bear, to say nothing of the risks incurred, we see one of the reasons why the "millions of China," who are not infrequently held up by those whose too great enthusiasm outruns their reason, as the components of a prodigious market for British goods, are not unlikely to continue in the future, as in the past, to adequately supply their own demand. ”

“ The head of a sacrificial cock is ceremoniously removed, the blood is poured in libation over the vessel's bows, and amid the ascending fumes and smoke of many joss-sticks, the detonation of crackers, and the soul-stirring din of the inharmonious gong, the start is duly and propitiously made. ”

“ When this is not possible the whole crew scramble on board, throw themselves upon the huge sweeps, ten men to each, and screaming and shouting like pandemonium let loose, drive the boat slowly forward, the wild refrain of their songs harmonising with the stroke of the oars and echoing backwards and forwards between the encircling walls of rock. Sometimes when the trackers are on shore the tow-rope gets entangled in some intervening rock. The mate on deck leaps up and beats a wild tattoo on the ship's drum. ”

“ The defiant rock walls of the gorges give place by degrees to less aggressive mountain slopes. Disintegrated sandstone colours the land with a warm, rich red; well-to-do looking farmsteads with gabled roofs and white-washed walls nestle among clumps of bamboo in pleasant hollows; and bright patches of sugar-cane and a variety of vegetables add to the general air of rural prosperity. ”

“ Now the thought that not unnaturally occurred to me was, what a marvellous thing it is that in the whole course of the two or three odd millenniums during which the Chinese have been struggling with the navigation of the Yang-tsze, they have failed to evolve so simple a mechanical contrivance as a windlass! With the most primitive hand-winch a couple of men could have effected all and more than the dozen delirious maniacs in a quarter of the time, and at an expenditure of an infinitesimal fraction of the human force. ”

“ If K'uei Fu does nothing else, it serves to throw a not insignificant light upon some of the
Nature has here assumed her grandest and most solemn garb.
causes of Chinese official opposition to foreign incursion. In the good old days K'uei Fu grew fat upon the proceeds of taxation imposed upon the river traffic, collecting, it is said, as much as 2000 taels (£300) a-day. With the opening of Ch'ung-k'ing to foreign trade these lucrative exactions were swept away, and ichabod is writ plainly over the dirt and squalor of the once opulent K'uei Fu. ”

“ They would all seize hold of it, go through an exaggerated goose-step in execrable time, and as soon as they had a little bit in hand, make a desperate plunge with it to a cross-beam amidships, where they would secure the few inches they had gained. ”