but by no means the least dangerous. The bulk of the men were on the bank, attached to a tracking line. Off they sped, yelling like fiends above the roar of the water ; while the boy, to add to the din, lustily beat a gong, and the cook a small drum, for the purpose of stirring the men to put forth their full strength. At about the centre of the rapid there was a dead halt, as if the boat had stuck fast on a reef, though the trackers were straining to their utmost with hands and feet planted firmly on the rocks. The skipper stamped, danced and bellowed to his crew; and they, responding with a wild shout, a desperate tug and a strain, at last launched our boat into the smooth water above. The danger of this rapid consists not so much in its force as in the narrowness of the channel, and in the multitude of rocks, sunken as well as above the water, on which the boat, were the tracking line to part, would cer- tainly drift, and there be dashed to pieces.
In the second, or Lukan Gorge, the mountains rise to a greater altitude, projecting in some places over the chasm as if to join and exclude the light from the already darkened river. There were numerous strange perpendicular markings in these rocks, like borings for the purpose of mining. These had appar- ently been made by a sort of natural sand-drill. Small hard pebbles imprisoned in the recesses of soft rock, with the aid of sand and water, have in time pierced these deep vertical shafts, and the attrition of the water on the face of the rocks has at last brought the tunnelled apertures to light.
At the next rapid, Shan-tow-pien, we noticed the wrecks of two Szechuan trading-boats, making in all nine which we had come across since we started from Ichang. It was snowing heavily as we made our way over the rocks to the village, which came down close to the water's edge; and towards dark we
