Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. III.pdf/57

 The workings are usually sunk obliquely, for a very short distance, into the rock, and arc abandoned in places where to our own miners the real work would have barely begun. They sink no perpendicular shafts, nor do their mines require any system of ventilation. The miners, of whom a group are shown in Plate XX., No. 44, work daily from seven A.M to four P.M., and their wages average 300 cash a day, or about seven shillings a man per week. They use a small oil lamp fixed to the head, similar to that which our miners employed before the Davy lamp was invented. Others of the villagers work at the mines; some are coalporters, and carry their burdens in creels fastened to their backs, after the plan shown in No. 46. At this sort of work the men can earn two hundred cash a day. The young children manufacture fuel. This fuel is made by mixing the coal, which here is of inferior quality, with water, then casting it in moulds and drying it in the sun. The process is shown in No. 43, while in No. 45 we see the fuel ready for exportation. Each block weighs 1$ lbs. and it is sold at the pit's mouth for about five shillings a ton. The Chinese still work their coal in a very imperfect manner, and they use it very sparingly for fuel, even in those provinces where it might be most abundantly obtained. Baron von Richthofen has assured us there is plenty of coal in Hupeh and Hunan, and that the coal field of Szechuan is also of enormous area. He further adds that at the present rate of consumption the world could be supplied from Southern Shasi alone for several thousand years, and yet, in some of the places referred to, it is not uncommon to find the Chinese storing up wood and millet stalks for their firing in winter, while coal in untold quantities lies ready for use in the soil just under their feet. These vast coal-fields will constitute the basis of China's future greatness, when steam shall have been called in to aid her in the development of her inland mineral resources. Wu-shan Gorge, which we entered on the morning of the iSth, is more than twenty miles in length. The river here was perfectly placid, and the view which met our gaze at the mouth of the gorge was perhaps the finest of the kind that we had encountered. The mountains rose in confused masses to a great altitude, while the most distant peak at the extremity of the reach resembled a cut sapphire, its snow lines sparkling in the sun like the gleams of light on the facets of a gem. The other cliffs and precipices gradually deepened in hue until they reached the bold lights and shadows of the rocky foreground. (See No. 51.)

The officers of a gunboat stationed at the boundary which parts Hupeh from Szechuan warned us to beware of pirates, and they had good reason for so doing. The same night, at about ten o'clock, an intense darkness having fallen upon the gorge, we were roused by the whispering of a boat's crew alongside us. Hailing them we got no answer, and we therefore next fired high, in the direction whence the sound proceeded; our fire was responded to by a flash and report from another direction. After this we kept watch during the entire night, and were again roused at about two o'clock to challenge a boat's crew that was noiselessly stealing down upon our quarters. A second time we were forced to fire, and the sharp ping of the rifle ball on the rocks had the effect of deterring further advances from our invisible foe. The disturbers of our repose must have been thoroughly acquainted with this part of the gorge, for even by day it is somewhat dark there, and at night-time is of such pitchy blackness that no trading boat would then venture to move from its rock-bound moorings.

On the 14th, as we were tracking up a small rapid, we were obliged to cut the bamboo line adrift, for the