CHAPTER VII - SHI-SHOW TO I-CHANG

Summary

By the foregoing chapter the reader should have gained some notion of the tediousness of boat travelling, and he can well imagine the impatience with which we looked forward to meeting with a place on the river marked on the map, as if to assure ourselves that we had made some real progress on our western journey. The day of our passing Shi-show, already mentioned, was our seventh on the Upper Yang-tsze, and we halted that night about a mile and a half above the place. The good effect of the principal incident of that day was evident on the following one, by our making good twenty-six geographical miles; and, the river's course being now tolerably direct, the evening found us well advanced northward, and we anchored above the village of Ho-hia. The first island of any extent which we had yet met with, since parting with the naval squadron, was passed early in the day, from which circumstance we named it “Sunday Island.”

It is almost needless for me in this place to offer suggestions concerning the navigation of the river, as our observations on that head appear in connection with the chart; but I would remark that from Shi-show upwards the nature of the river differs considerably from what it is below that place. As I have already stated, for the first hundred-and-twenty miles, the Upper Yang-tsze is exceedingly tortuous.