Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/86

 and decorated with flowers set out in vases and ornamental pots; thus art lent its aid to a scene of natural loveliness, the most romantic and beautiful. On the opposite bank of the stream a narrow path leads to a wooded ravine, whither the monks retire when they ought to abstract themselves from the world, forgetting existence, with its pleasures and sorrows, and cultivating that supreme repose which will bring them nearer Nirvana. It seemed to me, when I inspected the cell-like chambers of these devotees, that some among them were not unfamiliar with the fumes of the opium-pipe, and that they must, poor frail mortals! at times endeavour to float away to the western heavens steeped in the incense of that enslaving drug. We next halted at a village called Lien-Chow-Kwong. It was a miserable specimen of its kind, planted in a desolate neigh- bourhood, and with an air of poverty and destitution pervading both it and its inhabitants. The passes in this river present some bold rock and hill scenery, while the short reaches and sudden bends of the stream remind one of Highland lochs. In other places the hills slope gently downwards towards the water, and terminate in a bank of glittering sand, not unfrequently a mile broad. These sand-banks glare like miniature deserts beneath the blazing mid-day sun, but are happy in the asso- ciation of a refreshing stream which flows clear and cool along the margin. The Mang-Tsz-Hap, or Blind Man's Pass, is one of the finest on the river. Here the bold crags shoot up in precipices that are lost in shreds of drifting mist, as if the heavy clouds, sweeping across jagged pinnacles of rock, were riven into a hundred vapoury fragments. The weather was now cold and stormy, but fitful gleams of sunshine broke in upon the darkness. Once, caught in a rapid by a sudden gust of wind, our boat seemed like to have been shattered in the breakers;