Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/523

Rh at such ports) conic out from shore and arc made fast alongside—the transfer being made while under small headway. When the freight is sufficient at such ports the steamer casts anchor.

There are several lines of steamers plying the river and there is considerable competition, though the British rather have the lead on the others. There are two British lines and one Chinese line on whose steamers tickets are interchangeable, thus facilitating stop-overs, and between them they will shortly run a steamer each way each day on the six hundred mile run from Shanghai to Hankow. An enterprising Japanese firm and a German line are pushing for trade, and between these five regular lines and the many tramp merchantmen, the amount of freight moved easily makes the Yangtsze the main trade-artery of the empire.

We approached Nanking in the small hours of the morn, and as I sat on deck watching the grayness of the early dawn give way to the upward slanting pinkish beams of the orb of day I beheld a glorious sight—the water at my feet, then the curving shore, beyond to the eastward the graceful towers and pagodas of the city, and in the distance the peaceful gray and bluish hills, along the sculptured heights of which the first gleams of a sun, that would soon be altogether dazzling, were silently but swiftly stealing. Out on the river three vague forms, like huge monsters of the sea crept into inland waters, loomed suggestively through the diminishing gloom, and as the first rays that marked the beginning of a central China scorcher stole over the eastern hills, the reveille call of bugles turned my eyes upon these monster shadows, and from out the disappearing mist there came three men of war under as many flags, British, German and Chinese; the last in snowy white flying the dragon flag, the others in darksome coats, as if prepared for war. Their bugle notes were answered, as by an echo, from the camps of Chinese provincial troops on shore.

When I first saw the Yangtsze and traveled on its swiftly rushing surface it was the beginning of winter, and her waters were low and falling; but even then I was struck with the magnitude of this great waterway dividing the empire nearly in twain from east to west. On this trip it was summer and her bed was full, the rush and width of her muddy waters even more majestic. Piloting in midsummer is somewhat easier on account of the steady fullness of the water, but in the spring and autumn, during the rise and fall of the chocolate stream, the changes in the channels are many and various, so that piloting is no mean art. In sharp and yet pleasing contrast with the brown current, the banks and alluvial plains were green with tall reed grass, much used for fuel, which nearly everywhere attained a height of from seven to ten feet. On either side of the river away across the plains successive ranges of hills were overshadowed by huge masses of cumulus cloud