After some time we were successful, for a young and enterprising Mohammedan agreed to take us all the way to Pao T'eo, without stopping day or night, for the sum of Ts.70 (somewhere about £13). The price was high, but we returned to the wool-boat with a happy feeling of independence, which was increased when we heard that we should not be able to start the next morning until the other boats came down from the customs-house. We had, at first, been asked Ts.120 for the boat, and told we should have to wait a day, but we insisted on starting the following morning, and having knocked down the price to nearly one half, felt that we had not done badly.
As with riding mules and carts, so with the boat, an agreement was necessary, and this the village schoolmaster drew up for us; but by this time our skipper had returned, and was furious at finding that such a grand opportunity of squeezing the foreigner had slipped through his fingers. He did his best to frighten our new friend into backing out of his bargain, but did not quite succeed, and eventually went off down stream in a towering rage. We still had one more difficulty to overcome, a somewhat serious one, and one we did not quite understand, but eventually it transpired that our new skipper was trying to buy an old boat, not wanting to take his own to Pao T'eo and perhaps get her frozen in there. The owner of the old boat saw his opportunity, and was not slow to take advantage of it, as he would not take less than Ts.30, about three times its value under ordinary circumstances.
At last everything was settled, and about 11 A.M. we started, soon passing the wool-boats, which were tied up as usual. We found our craft pretty leaky, but by laying down a flooring of boughs and straw, and keeping up constant baling, we kept her very comfortable, and after all our chief anxiety was to travel rapidly. Part of our agreement was that we were to stop at Shih-Tsui-Tsi to take in fresh supplies, but that for every unnecessary delay the boatmen were to be fined one tael.
Shun chih. 1644–1662 K'ang hsi: 1662–1723
Yungchêng. 1723–1736 K'(ch)'ien lung. 1736–1796
K(ch)iak'(ch)'ing 1796–1821 Tao kuang 1821–1851
Hsienfêng 1851–1862 T'ung chih . 1862–1878