After a few days bargaining at Ichang--passage by steamer being no longer available--I succeeded in hiring a native passenger-boat to convey myself, servants, and baggage the four hundred miles that still lay between me and my destination for the exorbitant sum of one hundred and eighty taels, or forty-five pounds. A larger sum was at first demanded, and, there being only two or three boats of this class in port, whose owners combined to “squeeze” me, I was ultimately obliged to pay about a third more than the customary price. Travelling boats on the Upper Yang-tsze are, as a rule, very roomy and comfortable. They can usually be divided off into as many as four or five small rooms by wooden partitions; and, travelling as I was in winter, I had a stove fitted up, regulating the temperature by the windows which run along the sides of what is really an oblong house placed on the boat’s deck. In a good boat, the roof is over six feet in height, so that one can walk about comfortably from end to end. A mast is shipped right in front of and against the deckhouse, and this is utilized both for sailing and tracking--the tracking line running through a noose fixed near the top. In front of the mast is a broad deck, contracting towards the bows, accommodating from ten to a dozen rowers, and convertible at night into sleeping quarters for the crew. Over a well in the bows, and attachable to the deck by a noose, hangs a long heavy spar by which the boat can be speedily steered in any required direction--an absolute necessity where, tracking being carried on, sunken rocks close in-shore have to be avoided, or the tracking line gives way in a strong current.
In the agreement entered into between the skipper of the boat and myself, it was stipulated that there should be seven of a crew and fifteen trackers. The crew consisted of the skipper, the bowsman or pilot, who stood at the bows all day long and sounded continually with a long iron-shod bamboo, the steersman, three deck hands, and the cook, who exercised his culinary art in a primitive kitchen constructed in an opening in the deck near the bows.
The skipper, being a confirmed opium-smoker, proved of little use; and it was not until the second night from Ichang that I discovered his smoking propensities. I lay with my head towards the bows and, being awakened during the night by someone crying, I saw a light shining through the chinks of the partitions. On calling my servant to see what was the matter, I learned that the light was the light of an opium lamp, and that the wife of the skipper was crying because her husband would not come to bed. I got up and found him lying at full length alongside his lamp. I bundled him into the little room which he, his wife, and two children occupied over the stern, and blew out his lamp.