Page:Ningpo to Shanghai.djvu/22

8 westerly direction,is the Wong-koong ling (Prince Duke Pass) at the top of which is a small Temple and Ding or rest house for travellers. The walls of this Temple are of the most simple construction, viz uprights and frame work of wood, with split bamboos interwoven daubed with mud.

Tchang koe is a good sized village in a valley S. W. from Wong koong ling, and from which it is distant one mile. The bed of a wide ford is passed en route, over a bridge of six apertures, formed by granite uprights, the road way of the bridge being a mere split bamboo platform lashed on spars.

The Poo-coo Ling (Pigeon Pass) directly South from Tchang koe, is a tiresome ascent of over fifteen hundred feet;&mdash;the mountain, a huge granite boulder, being still three or four hundred feet above the Pass. This pass marks the boundary of the Ningpo and Funghwa Districts. The view from the top is fine. Running east and west, at a distance of eight or ten miles, is another chain of mountains, between the base of which and the Poo-coo mount a stream meanders under a smaller line of hills, the plain within being covered with Mulberry and tallow trees over what would be taken for pasture land, but that the few cattle foddered render such plots unnecessary. Wheat, Beans Grassicher, Clover, Peas and some Tea Bushes are all to be found here in the spring of the year&mdash;the Hills, as before told of, being studded with firs as thickly as they can stand.

Four or five lé from the foot of Poo-coo mount, in a southerly direction, is the village of Song neu haen with a population of 300 families. A little outside the village at its entrance is a huge hollow tree, 24 feet round, the branches of which cover a space of a hundred feet and upwards.

On the way from Song new haen to Shang loen-hing, 