Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/274

 and infirm folk bathing in the healing vapours. But the little copper furnaces encased in basket-work supplied a less melancholy explanation of the mystery.

When I watched the coolness, pluck and daring with which these poor river navigators will shoot the rapids of the river Min, risking their lives in every voyage — in a country where there are no insurances, except such as the guilds may chance to afford, and where no higher reward is to be gained than a hand-to-mouth subsistence on the most wretched fare — I began to get a truer insight into the manly and hardy qualities latent in this misgoverned Chinese race. In some of these watery steeps the channel winds and writhes from right to left, and forms acute angles among the rocks at every two or three boats' lengths. Once, when we descended, our frail craft tearing down these bends at a fearful speed, I thought for a moment that our fate was sealed, for it seemed impossible that the helmsman could ever bring the vessel round in time to clear a huge rock which rose up right ahead. There he stood on the bridge, calm and erect, with an iron grasp on the long rudder, impassive until we were just plunging on to the rock ; and then, as I prepared to leap for life, he threw his whole weight on to the oar, and brought the boat round with a sweep that cleared the danger by the breadth of a hair. Thus we shot onwards, down! down! down! like a feather tossed to and fro by the caprice of the irresistible waves. As we passed down stream we saw a great number of men fishing with cormorants. These fishermen poled themselves about on bamboo-rafts, and on each raft was a basket and two or three cormorants, trained to dive and bring up fish for their owners. As I intended to take some pictures on the way down to Foochow, my friend, who was pressed for time, determined to find his way home in a native