Ichang

“ Large Farmsteads.—Wedding Party.—Atoning for an Insult.—Rowdy Lichuan.—Old-fashioned Inn.—Dog's Triumphal Progress.—Free Fight.—Wicked Music.—Poppy-fields.—Bamboo Stream.
It is very unusual to make the journey from Ichang to Chungking by land; but one year in the spring-time the thought of the dog-roses and the honeysuckle tempted us, as also the prospect of getting to our destination a few days earlier; so we crossed the river at Ichang, and set off over the mountains, at first all white and glittering with new-fallen snow. ”

“ 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 traveler who has everything ready at Ichang to start on the long journey through the glorious Yangtze gorges and rapids often wonders why his men can not be induced to start. The reason is that they are wading through the Luck Book, thus wasting an unnecessary week. ”

“ On the Yangtze: Ichang to Wanhsien We reached Ichang on Sunday afternoon, and were glad to be in time for a service in the Presbyterian church, the last really homelike church we attended till we reached Burma. In all other churches there were things to remind us that we were in China, but here we were in Scotland once more, and this is the only station of the Scotch Established Church in China proper: they have a flourishing work, however, in Manchuria. ”

“ But the Mongolian bowed, passed them at a slow, meditative walk, and was lost from their sight behind the cabin's port side.
The idea took hold of Peter that the stalker had become the killer. There was a telegraph station at Ichang through which ran the frail copper wires connecting the seventy millions of Szechwan Province with civilization. Had it been possible for the Mongolian to signal his master in Len Yang and receive an answer while the Hankow lay at Ichang? ”

“ There is one advantage, too, which the upper section of the river has over the lower; its channel never shifts, and, once navigated by a steamer, there is no chance of its being lost. It is not too much to say that, during the winter months, the masters of the steamers running between Hankow and Ichang have to conduct surveying operations every trip, and I have found no one more anxious than these very masters to navigate the river from Ichang to Ch’ung-k’ing, so confident are they of success. ”

“ It would be difficult to find a more striking example of that complete lack of imagination which has doomed China to a perpetual back seat among the competing Powers in the present advanced stage of the progress of humanity.
On the ninth day out from Ichang we reached K'uei Fu, the first town worthy of the name that we had passed, built on the steep hillside of an open valley. Our struggle with the rapids and gorges proper is at an end; henceforth our way will lie along the bottoms of more open valleys, with only an occasional rapid here and there to interrupt our passage. ”

“ Before leaving Ichang for a trip to the Yangtse gorges I expressed my intention of trying to get some of those beautiful Reeves pheasants, having tails several feet in length, which are indigenous to that locality, but was warned that it would be necessary to take long leggings as a protection against spear-grass. Not having any with me, and believing I knew what spear-grass was, I refrained from borrowing, so that on landing at Nantou with my dog and gun, it was in an ordinary shooting suit and worsted stockings. ”

“ Why, they none of them works for their living."
A day or two after a great fire at Ichang a strange 266 sight was to be seen. A man, who had been accused of helping to steal away some poor woman's child during the confusion, with a white calico placard pasted on to his coat behind attesting his innocence, his pigtail hanging unplaited, and wearing a crown of coarse paper cash, with long streamers of paper cash hanging from it, was going round from shrine to shrine, at each protesting his innocence. A man went before him with a gong, shouting out the whole story. ”

“ It has been said that, if the Upper Yang-tsze were navigated by steam, collisions would be of frequent occurrence, but not more so than in the section between Hankow and Ichang. In ascending, junks are tracked as close to the banks as possible, while in descending, they keep to the middle of the river. ”

“ Pak-hoà ̄, another of the Treaty ports of the 1876 Convention, presents a very marked contrast to Ichang. It is a town of some 10,000 inhabitants in the province of Canton, on the northern shore of Tonking, and is likely, now that the concession for the railway between it and Nanking has been secured by the French Government, to be of great importance as a port of export. Unfortunately, however, it has not a good harbour, and as at Hankow, large vessels are compelled to anchor in the offing on account of the lowness of the water further inshore. ”

“ This city is one of considerable commercial importance, and as it stands at the entrance of the Gorges, it is the highest point to which steam navigation can be carried until these rocky defiles, which extend for upwards of 100 miles beyond it, shall have been thoroughly surveyed, and some obstacles removed, which render the navigation there by far the most dangerous on the rivers of China. Ichang is now open to foreign trade, and is the present limit of steam navigation on the river. ”

“ It was naturally supposed that the opening of Ichang would attract a considerable share of the transit trade of Hankow; but, curiously enough, the transit trade of both ports with Ssŭ-ch’uan went on concurrently increasing. In 1879, Hankow sent up £600,000, and Ichang £50,000, a total of £650,000; in 1880, Hankow sent up £500,000, and Ichang £250,000, a total of £750,000; in 1881, Hankow figured for £800,000, and Ichang for £200,000, a total of one million; in 1882, Hankow figured for £350,000, and Ichang for £200,000, a total of £550,000 ”

“ Next morning we were waited upon by the new governor, who received us in the state apartment of the palace. We found him a weak, undecided young man, who seemed frightfully nervous at his sudden accession to power and eager to get rid of us. We explained to him the terms of our contract with his father, Mai Lo, and while we did not mention the ten thousand taels, we insisted upon a proper escort to Ichang and payment of all the expenses of the trip back to Shanghai. ”

“ The Chinese were going out to fight the Lolos, and the missionary saw them carrying a handsome young man bound on a plank so that he could not move—so bound that his head was thrown back. After certain ceremonies they cut the man's throat, and scattered the blood on the flags; it was a sort of human sacrifice. Another story we heard from some devoted Franciscan Sisters up at Ichang. They assured us that if a mother found her children {69} weakly, and she lost one or two, she would make up her mind that the reason they were ill was because an evil spirit had a grudge against her. ”

“ An experienced traveler in China relates that he penetrated from Shanghai southwestward through China towards India immediately after the destruction of the summer palace of the emperor by French and English troops, and the investiture of Peking thirty-five years ago. The expedition was considered dangerous, as the antagonism of the whole country, smarting under humiliation and defeat was to be feared. On arriving at Ichang, eleven hundred miles from the coast, the war news had just come to the knowledge of the government officials ”

“ These three places together form what is practically one vast city of something like two million inhabitants: a city so favourably situated in the heart of China16 that it can hardly fail to become a commercial capital of pre-eminent importance. The large European trading community is fully alive to this fact, and building land is rapidly increasing in value. It is the terminus of the ocean-going vessels, and the starting-point of the smaller cargo and passenger-steamers bound for Ichang, about 390 miles further up the river. ”

“ Foreign men often get the idea that women rule the roost in China, because when they want to buy a house or bit of land the sale is often delayed owing to some old woman of the family not agreeing to it. And 180 the scolding tongue of an old woman has before now proved too much for a British Consul to withstand. But it must be remembered what a dull, mulish obstinacy is that of the Chinese man, and that somehow or other the Chinese woman has to get on with him. At Ichang, in one street at least, the men were said to be constantly beating their wives ”

“ There is a406 walled riverine city up seventy feet of stairs; a foreign settlement; golf course, to be sure; Episcopal trade schools; clubs; consulates; Established Church of Scotland Mission; interesting temples and pagodas. Ichang has for immemorial years been the headquarters of perhaps the bravest boatmen in the world, the Hupeh trackers and sailors of the gorges. Read a hundred books of travel and you have their story. Here also is the headquarters of China’s red life-boat service, an effective and daring company of men. ”

“ The season, then, that proves all but impossible for junks is the very season when steamers could run, and vice versâ. During low water, there is, in my opinion, one, and only one, insuperable obstacle to a steamer—the Ch’ing T’an Rapid, the first serious rapid above Ichang. It lies at the eastern entrance of the Mi-tsang or “Granary” Gorge. When I passed down in the end of December, 1884, there were three channels in the rapid—the chief or central channel never attempted by ascending junks, and two side channels separated from the central by masses of rock. ”

“ The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet, brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed only suit of rusty black, and arranging his looks by a bit of broken looking-glass, that hung up in the school-house. That he might make his appearance before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer with whom he was domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman, of the name of Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth, like a knight-errant in quest of adventures. ”

“ Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers, who beset every portal to her heart; keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new competitor. ”

“ Silhouette of the house of Kasaku far away. O-Noto and Ichiro under the trees, Ichirō with a lantern. Both have white towels tightly bound round their heads; their robes are girded well up, and their sleeves caught back with tasuki cords, to leave the arms free. Each carries a long sword.
It is the hour, as the Japanese most expressively say, "when the sound of the river is loudest." There is no other sound but a long occasional humming of wind in the needles of the pines; for it is late autumn, and the frogs are silent. The two shadows do not speak, and the sound of the river grows louder. ”

“ Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash—he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind.
The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master's gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast—dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. ”

“ It was a mad race for old Ichabod, and they were pretty well drenched when the old maid climbed aboard the [220] transport, breathless but triumphant. I have since learned that Dido won her wandering Æneas in Manila, and that the captain finally has found his “bucko mate.”
It was old Ichabod’s delight to teach a class of sorry-looking señoritas, with their dusty toes stuck into carpet slippers, and their hair combed back severely on their heads. The afternoons he spent in visiting his flock; we could descry him from afar, chin in the air, arms swinging, hiking along with five-foot strides. ”

“ In the minds of most men—Japanese men, at least—who have married at the dictates of their parents, there is always some little cherished chamber to which, despite the passing years, memory returns with loving, loitering step. So with Lord Ichigo. Now, with the fate of his beloved child in his hands, the father looked back upon his own life, and it was no reflection upon his excellent and virtuous wife that he did so with just a shade of vague regret. ”

“ Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed, as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad day light.
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. ”