Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/524

518 sharply outlined against a very blue sky. Sometimes the foothills stretched to the river's brink, and the occasional cliffs thus formed bore upon their tops graceful temples and pagodas, for in China the best places and sites are always given over to temples and pagodas, if not to graves.

As we left Wuhu, we passed many lumbering rafts, some immense ones with a draft of ten feet or more, carrying huts and food, live stock (mostly pigs and chickens), etc., for some thirty or fifty people, the families and assistants of the men who were bringing the lumber to market. They went with the current, of course, but they managed to keep clear of shallows, mud banks and rocks by the artful device of sending out a small crew in a heavy skiff with a large anchor, from which a hempen cable ran to the raft and was there made to wind up on a stout capstan revolved by some twenty pairs of hands. By sending this auxiliary anchor-boat to the proper point, both in direction and in distance, they could, by winding up the cable, drag the raft even athwart the very current of 'the yellow dragon,' the mighty Yangtsze.

Though only thirty miles from Kiukiang to the White Deer Grotto, it is a good two days' journey on foot and by chair across plains and over hills of no mean height, for the route led us across the Lü Mountains by way of Killing and the Nank'ang pass. Instead of arriving at noon, as it should, our steamer reached Kiukiang at midnight, at the end of a heavy rain; yet we decided to push right on across the plains and to do our climbing in the cool of the early morning. Accordingly, after much discussion with the coolies, who everywhere in China wrangle vociferously over the terms of any bargain, we managed to get four coolies for each chair, several torch bearers who carried long bamboo flare torches, and some three baggage coolies apiece, and our long procession stalked across the rice fields, or rather between them, for they were under water, across streams and along marshes, under a heavily clouded yet at times moon-lit sky. As we went ahead we found the chair coolies grumbling with the man who had bought the torches for not getting enough, and on persistent inquiry we found that the fellow had 'squeezed' half of the Mexican dollar we had given him for torches, and had bought only fifty cents' worth. Barring a few stumbles and one spill, however, we succeeded in arriving safely at the half-way house among the foothills at 4:30 After a short rest and a cold bite, we started on foot to climb the steep ascent to Killing Valley. We went up slope after slope, one long stretch having some two thousand steps, getting, as the fuller light of day began to dawn, magnificent views of the plains across which we had come in the dark and of the Yangtsze curving in a great S beyond. In some places the drop off the side of the path, which in many sections was paved with large granite blocks, was quite sheer and a fall would have plunged one