Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/315

 lower ground, and comprises a large suburb which suffered severely in the flood of 1870, but has since been rebuilt. In the afternoon we were the spectators of a naval review. Six small gun-boats, each mounting a six-pound gun at the bow, were drawn up in line and fired their cannon at irregular inter- vals. I say irregular, because some of the artillery refused to go off at all; and when the sham fight was all over, we could hear them discharging themselves during the night. The boats were small, and had each about forty rowers on board. When the review was over, the admiral landed and rode off on a gaily-caparisoned pony, followed by his retainers.

At Ichang we had to hire a large rapid-boat to make the ascent of the Gorges, and we left our sailing vessels to await our return. Before we started a cock was sacrificed to the river goddess ; its blood and feathers were sprinkled on the bow, while a libation was poured upon the water. We had a crew of twenty-four men at the sweeps, who worked to the tune of a shrill piping song, or rather yell, and under their exertions it was not long before Ichang had been passed and the mouth of the first gorge was before us. Here the river narrows from half a mile to a few hundred yards across, and pours through the rocky defile with a velocity that makes it difficult to enter. The hills rose on each side from 500 to 2,500 feet in height, presenting two irregular stone walls to the river, each worn and furrowed with the floods of ages, and showing some well-defined water-markings 100 feet above the winter stream, up which we were now toiling on our way. The further we entered the gorges the more desolate and dark became the scene; the narrow barren defile presenting a striking contrast to the wide cultivated plains through which we had been making our way from the sea, for more then 1,000 miles.