Which brings me back to my starting-point. On the steamboat you have no adventures. But on the houseboat you do. For instance, the other day the rope broke as we were towing up a rapid, and down we dashed, turning round and round, and annihilating in five minutes the labour of an hour. I was afraid, I confess; but the boatmen took it as a matter of course. In some way, incomprehensible to me, they got us into the bank, and, looking up, the first thing I saw was an embankment in construction--the railway from Ichang to Chungking. When it is finished we shall go by train--not even by steamboat,--and so see nothing except tunnels. Certainly, we shall not be compelled to pass the night in a small village; nor permitted to see the sunset behind these lovely hills and the moon rising over the river between the cliffs of the gorge. Nor shall we then be delayed, as I was yesterday, till the water should run down, and so tempted to walk into the country. I made for a side valley, forded a red torrent, and found myself among fields and orchards; green of mulberries, green of fruit trees, green of young corn; and above, the purple hills, with all their bony structure showing under the skin of soil. I followed a high path, greeted by the peasants I met with a charming smile and that delightful gesture whereby, instead of shaking your hand, they clasp theirs and shake them _at_ you. I came at last to a solitary place, and, sitting down there, watched the evening light on the mountains. I watched, and they seemed to be saying something. What?
"Rocks that are bones, earth that is flesh, what, what do you mean Eyeing me silently? Streams that are voices, what, what do you say? You are pouring an ocean into a cup. Yet pour, that all it can hold May at least be water of yours."
At dusk I got back to the river, and found that a wind had sprung up and the junks were trying to pass the rapid. There must have been fifty of them crowded together. They could only pass one by one; and the scene was pandemonium. The Chinese are even noisier than the Italians, and present the same appearance of confusion. But in some mysterious way an order is always getting evolved. On this occasion it seemed to be perfectly understood which boat should go first. And presently there she was, in mid-rapid, apparently not advancing an inch, the ropes held taut from a causeway a quarter of a mile off. At last the strain suddenly ceased, and she moved quickly up stream. Another followed. Then it was dark. And we had to pass the night, after all, tossing uneasily in the rough water. Soon after dawn we started again. I went across to the causeway, and watched the trackers at work--twenty each on two ropes, hardly advancing a step in five minutes. Then the boat's head swung into shore, the tension ceased; something had happened. I waited half an hour or so. "Nothing doing," in the expressive American phrase. Then I went back. We had sprung a leak, and my cabin was converted into a swimming-bath. Another hour or so repairing this. Then the rope had to be brought back and attached again. At last we started for the second time, and in half an hour got safely through the hundred yards of racing waters into the bank above. At ten I got my breakfast, and we started to sail with a fair wind. It dropped. Rain came on. My crew (as always in that conjuncture) put up their awning and struck work. So here we are at 1 P.M., in a heavy thunder-shower, a mile from the place we tried to leave at six o'clock this morning. This is the ancient method of travelling--four thousand years old, I suppose. It is very inconvenient! Oh, yes--BUT!----