Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/323

Rh found ourselves in front of a small cabin made out of the debris of a wrecked boat. The owner of the wreck, an aged man, resided within, and had been residing there for some days past. He looked cold and wretched, but he would have nothing to say to us and haughtily rejected our proffered help.

We had now reached the great rapid of the Upper Yangtsze, which occurs at the mouth of the Mitan Gorge. Here, while I was engaged in photographing the scene, I fell in with a mandarin, who asked many questions about my honourable name and title, my country, my kinsmen, and as he had never set eyes on a photographic instrument before, he wanted to see the result of my work. When the picture was shown to him, he enquired by what possible means a drawing could be so perfectly completed in so short a space of time; and then, without waiting for an answer, and casting an anxious glance at me to make sure I had neither horns, hoofs, nor tail visible, he hurried off to the village, with the conviction that my art was an uncanny one, and that my diabolical insignia were only craftily concealed.

Accordingly, on taking my next view at the same village, I was surrounded by a crowd of sullen spectators who, though it was explained that I was only securing a picture, favoured me with sundry tokens of their dread in the shape of sods and stones. Chang tried his eloquence on the people, but with little effect. We packed up as quickly as possible and marched down the bank to cross over to the other side, where my companions were preparing for the ascent of the rapid. No doubt these villagers, some of them, had heard the popular fiction that pictures such as mine were made out of the eyes of Chinese babes. I narrowly escaped a stroke from an oar as I took refuge in a boat; but the blow was warded off with a force