it to a cross-beam amidships, where they would secure the few inches they had gained. This strenuous performance was then gone through all over again from the beginning, and the motion continued until they had at length dragged themselves to the top of the obstruction. Now the thought that not unnaturally occurred to me was, what a marvellous thing it is that in the whole course of the two or three odd millenniums during which the Chinese have been struggling with the navigation of the Yang-tsze, they have failed to evolve so simple a mechanical contrivance as a windlass! With the most primitive hand-winch a couple of men could have effected all and more than the dozen delirious maniacs in a quarter of the time, and at an expenditure of an infinitesimal fraction of the human force. It would be difficult to find a more striking example of that complete lack of imagination which has doomed China to a perpetual back seat among the competing Powers in the present advanced stage of the progress of humanity.
On the ninth day out from Ichang we
