EITHER you, O patient reader, nor I desire any detailed itinerary or account of this or any other of our journeyings. Les jours succedent aux jours : they are gone, each with its chances and changes, like unto the rest. Sunrise and the joy of a new day; a muster-call of dogs, beaters, and carriers on the towpath, so many hours of steady tramping, so many birds bagged, or haply missed ; lunch in the sun-flecked shade of a pine grove, followed by a pipe smoked in silent rumination on a soft bed of'ferns. On again, slower now, working gradually round to the spot where the boats' flags stand out above the river-bank, till the sun is gathered to the purple peaks and the evening mist floats on the water like a veil of milky gauze ; back to the boats, as the dusk falls, through farms and villages where the smoke of the rice-pot rises, with message of comfort to meet the toiler homeward bound. Each day is like the rest ; each evening brings the same ineitable luxury of hot tubs, tea. and meditative smokes, the same delight of drowsily stretching tired limbs in idleness Olympian, until a tickling fragrance from the kitchen culminates in dinner. Each night brings the same good cheer, rosy-hued plans for the morrow, and the deep dreamless sleep that comes of doing fit things. And so the day is done, gathered into the unfathomable depths of Time, leaving only fragrant memories that shall be with us until we, too, pass out into the shadowy bourne that lies beyond the sunset.
I might, of course, set forth each day's journey, with maps, and give you a rdsumd of local industries, a comparative analysis of dialects, and a scientific summary of the day's bag. This, with the aid of other men's writings, would be easy, and in accordance with the usage of bookmaking in China ; also, it would materially assist me in the provision of the intolerable tale of words required by Mr. Arnold to complete this volume. But I promised you at the outset that herein you should find little geography and less science, and I keep my word. I will tell you only of things that stand out against the background of memorable days, as trees against the sky-line of a hill. Memorable days-ay, but already, under the stealthy hand of knavish Time, their charm is informed with a collective quality, hazy in outline, subtle, elusive. There is fragrance ill it still, as in a jar of potpourri, but the essence of each individual flower is lost. Really important people (Prime Ministers and prime donne) keep diaries to prevent such pathetic evaporation of marketable memories.
Let that pass,-to my tale. At Wang Shapu, a country of low rolling hills covered with oak scrub, we bagged sixty pheasants in two days and did some goose-stalking in the open. to the ruin of our clothes and the unmistakable amusement of the geese. But the particular mental picture which I garnered in that spot (I cannot think of it calmly even now) is of my lonely self on the brow of a steep hill, a brace of pheasants dropped sixty yards below ; Nelly pointing steadily just ahead, Ah Kong and the beater on the other side of the hill, and down there a Chinaman calmly retrieving my birds under my very nose, and making off with them to a village some two hundred yards away. I never saw those birds again, and therefore-such is the way of man, with pheasants or females - I shall remember them with regret, long after every bagged bird is forgotten.
To do the Chinese peasant justice, he is usually a decent fellow in this matter of retrieving, especially in country where foreigners do not shoot too often. To have one's bird deliberately lifted in the open by the Lord of the Soil was a new experience, another pernicious result, no doubt, of the " sovereign rights " movement. As a general rule, unless you happen to be in a district where so-called. sportsmen have irritated the natives by tramping through their crops, the countryman will take a kindly interest in your proceedings, advise you where to find game, and help to retrieve a lost bird. And should you express appreciation with a ten-cent piece, you will be none the less welcome when next you pass this way.
It was at Wang Shapu, at our anchorage under the joss-house, that Gehazi, in all innocence, threw Thurlsby's front teeth overboard-two pearly incisors on a gold plate, which lay by night in a tumbler of water by their owner's head. It was dark that morning in the Ark. Gehazi saw only what he mistook for the remains of a whisky and soda. Anyhow, the teeth went overboard, and the horrid fact was discovered only when Thurlsby awoke half an hour later. By that time Lambton had got the boats under way. When the K.C. realised what had happened, words failed ; there he stood, in his pyjamas, grievously stricken, a mute appeal for help and sympathy in the gaping void of his upper jaw. I don't think any of us had ever appreciated before the value of dentistry to the modern man. And what made it worse, in the face of distorted misery so acute, was the irresistible tickling of the ludicrous side of the tragedy. Jim's facial contortions, intended to express sympathetic grief, reminded one of those Japanese rubber masks where the tragic and comic blend in a hideous grotesque.
To proceed, in the face of so grievous a catastrophe, without attempting a rescue was out of the question, so the morning was spent in search for the lost treasure. Happily there was not more than four feet of water at the fatal spot, and Bean-curd's trained eye eventually caught the gleam of gold " in the waves beneath him shining," and, stripping with the swiftness of a conjurer, he retrieved the precious object. Thurlshy received it with a smile the like of which his clients and colleagues of the Supreme Court have never seen.
That night I heard the incident discussed by our beaters and the crew over their rice-howls, and Ah Kong, whose prowess as a raconteur evidently pressed Bean-curd to emulation like any trouvere of olden time, told a wonderful story of the ways of white men and their many inventions. The utterly fantastic details of his tale threw a new light on his powers of imagination, and I made a mental note of the fact for future use. But the story, as he told it, was not without a certain humorous quality.
Nearly all foreigners, he said, towards middle age resort to the aid of skilled physicians to replace, as Thurlsby had done, worn-out portions of their anatomy. The Chinese had no such devices : even a wooden leg, if a man have need of one, he must buy from the European. Well, he, Ah Kong, was once up country with four foreigners in the Changchow district (he gave all their hong-iiames, and explained how they earned their rice), and they had stopped one day to watch an acrobat contortionist at a village fair. One of the village elders, talkative and friendly, asked the foreigners whether such feats could be seen in their honourable country. Mosely, the tea-man (there was no mistaking Ah Kong's description of him), replied that a contortionist could not earn a living in England because all Englishmen could take themselves to pieces. And with that he scooped out his left eye. The crowd, forsaking the acrobat, gathered close to see this marvel, whereupon each of the foreigners took off and exhibited some portion of his anatomy : one his hair, another his teeth, and the last man his left arm. The headman, sore amazed,' asked whether the white man's stomach was also removable, to which Mosely replied that it was, but only in the early morning. That, with certain necessary omissions, was the story ; whereupon, led by Bean-curd and supported by the whole strength of the company, there ensued a most edifying discussion on the comparative anatomy of white men and yellow. Its details I must leave to the night wind that heard them and sighed ; to the pale moon that nestled her face behind fleecy clouds.
Now it is a fact that these four men, even as Ah Kong described them, do actually exist in the flesh ; but it is a thousand to one that they have never been up country together (Beiiton, the man with the wig, doesn't shoot), in which case my young friend must have invented the whole story, simply to impress his yokel audience and to score off Bean-curd. And yet we still wonder at the primitive lies with which these people regale us every day !
At Liu Kuang-tao, below the rapids, we left poor old Rocket, a victim to dysentery: his grave stands on a wooded knoll overlooking the river, and his dogged soul, if there be any justice in the scheme of creation. is in Elysian fields where game is plentiful. Poor fellow, the hard work and cold had aggravated his chronic trouble, and although we dosed him with condensed milk and brandy, his mortal coil could not stand against it. But the courage and spirit of the beast ! Even on his last morning, hardly able to stagger ashore, how his eye brightened and his tail wagged at sight of the gun ! To hear his pitiful little whine, as we went off without him, sent a lump to my throat. Poor old Rocket -sleep well! Many a good day have we had together, and if, when my turn comes to creep underground, my duty has been done as you did yours, we may meet againwho knows ?-in hunting-grounds more celestial. Alsoif the Buddhists are right in their conception of the scheme of immortality-you may yet wield the gun, while I, in expiation, range patiently ahead.
Just below Liu Kuang-tao we came across a family of peripatetic wild-fowlers, three brothers, with their promiscuous assortment of women and children, natives of Kiangpeh on the Yangtsze, whose ancestors, it seems, have plied this trade from time immemorial. Their boat was narrow and low in the water, in shape like an elongated slipper-boat, with a monstrous-looking swivel gun projecting from its bows. This archaic weapon was practically all barrel,-a rusty gas-pipe barrel over twelve feet long, about 4-bore, with a ramshackle shoulder-piece where a stock might have been. Its charge of villainous saltpetre and miscellaneous ironware (nails, slugs, and scrap heap refuse) was rammed down by the man in the bows, who apparently attached little value to life, and the blessed thing would kill, they said, at i So feet and more. Our followers showed unmistakable respect for these practical sportsmen,- men who could, and did, make shooting pay,-and heard Bean-curd explaining to Ah Kong how that a wild~fowler from Kiangpch, by reason of long practice and inherited virtue, can see as well on a dark night as common men by day. Their modus operandi is the same as that of punt,-gun men all the world over : a stealthy approach to duck, close-packed on open water, or to geese on the riverside feeding~grounds, and a careful shot into the darkest part of the mass. These men know every inch of the river, the winds that bring birds down to the mud-flats, and all the mysterious habits of wild-fowl, and they make good bags. The headman told me that it was considered bad business to let off his ancient piece for less then ten head, and the average would be considerably over this. The noise of the gun being great, it does not do to repeat it very often, as the birds are easily frightened to the inland waters. Bright windy nights are best for duck on the river, but most geese are bagged on the flats, just before dawn.
Three families of these prehistoric sportsmen, it seems. divide the river between them, by the sort of prescriptive right which grows naturally in China, and their bag is sold to a goose-eating clientele, which has also grown up all along the river, as well as to the markets of Hangchow and Shanghai. Seeing that the mouths of our crew watered undeniably at sight of the geese in the punt's forehold, we bought three, at the equivalent of eightpence each as korban for the crowd : two shillings' worth of pure joy. Our own bag of wild-fowl, up to date, had been small, consisting of one goose, a few duck, and a dozen teal, inland wanderers all.
Above the rapids the river runs blue and clear between high hills, at mid-day a streak of dancing light gleaming between the deep shadows of the thickly-wooded banks. The hills are too steep and too closely timbered for shooting. There is but little current on the stream ; with a fair wind you can get through in a few hours, but with a breeze from the south it might take days, for tracking is impossible in many places. Above the gorges the country is much the same as below, low rolling foot-hills stretching back from the river, where game is fairly plentiful. On an island just below the rapids we found woodcock and had good sport, the flushed birds making across to the left bank where Thurlshy layperdu in the cover. On our last day up stream we came within sight of the town of Yen Chou ; the country ahead looked inviting (it always does), but the time had come for taking the homeward trail, and we left that country undisturbed.
On that day, scouring a valley above the gorges, we met an imposing funeral procession, with droning horns and wailing pipes, dragging its tawdry panoply of woe along a flagged path amidst the fields, bearing the husk of some departed mandarin to its ancestral resting-place in the hills. All the usual pomp and circumstance were there. strangely incongruous in this remote place, where the north wind's song whispered low and sweet through the pines ; all the pitiful insignia of the social atom that had been, whose very name must so soon be forgotten ; red boards with high-sounding titles blazoned in gold, umbrellas of honour, and life-size paper effigies, with a stream of relatives and friends forowing in sedan-chairs and afoot, accompanied by all the rag, tag, and bobtail of professional ghouldom. And loud above the burden of the marche funjbre sounded the voice of the mourner, gasping sobs and wailings of women clad in sackcloth, the very soul of human grief, speeding short-lived man to his long home. And as we stood to watch the procession go by, Pat, who had been busy in some thick scrub to our right, gave tongue, and thereat a deer broke cover right in front of the leading minstrels. jim, the only one who could get a clear shot, fired, and the deer, badly wounded, went away with three dogs in full cry. Then occurred an interesting thing, proving once more how much better is a live dog than a dead lion (or Button-man) : for the funeral march stopped abruptly, the coffin-bearers dropped their load, and the women in sackcloth ceased to wail, all eagerly intent on the chase. The departed and all his virtues were forgotten, all the etiquette of conventional grief swallowed up in the impending doom of a fleeing river-deer ; and when, 300 yards away, it stumbled and the dogs were upon it, an excited chorus of " ai-yahs " broke out all along that line of mourners. Until the beaters had brought in their quarry they stood there, talking all at once and curiously examining the strange clothes and guns of the men from the West. And then, all of a sudden, the bearers resumed their illustrious burden, the sound of lamentation broke out afresh, and the evening air was filled with the shuddering sobs of afflicted humanity. And as I watched the motley procession drag its serpentine length down the valley, I realised how one touch of nature can indeed make the whole wide world kin, for even so, long ago in Kildare, had I seen another dreary cortege of conventional woe, with all its paraphernalia of hearse, mourners, and crape-trailing mutes, forget their business and their affliction while the hunt went by. It is one of the universal weaknesses of humanity, a common instinct of needs make amends to our dead, reach of a kind word, deaf to our kindness and our care, by loud proclamations of unavailing grief, by tardy epitaphs that shall atone for words of comfort unspoken.
In all this region, where the white man goes but seldom, our boats were the centre of politely inquisitive crowds,our dress, dogs,and domestic economy the sub- ject of interminable discussion. But that which attracted more attention even than our humble selves was the appearance of Ah Kong and his brother dogcoolies. Most of our followers were ordinary natives, of little distinction, but the kennel-wallahs were indeed a remarkable trio. For these poursuivants of the permanent staff usually acquire a sporting tendency of mind which, with the help of their masters' discarded raiment, expresses itself in their persons. Jim's man had arrayed himself in the complete summer kit of a Sikh policeman, putties and all, crowning the whole with a saucy yacht- atonement, that we nust the dead who are beyond ing cap. Thurlsby's sported a striped sweater with tight rowing shorts, wearing his hair like the blades of the Foochow Road, but tucking his pigtail under a straw hat. But all their united glories paled before those of Ah Kong, arrayed in a Monte Carlo hat, Norfolk jacket, and riding breeches, with woollen stockings of generous pattern (they looked like Wilden's) and canvas gaiters. The majesty of his appearance was undeniable, hors concours, dazzling from the outset and growing in splendour, but when, at the end of the first week, one of the gaiters succumbed, Jim's man equalised matters to some extent by carrying an empty binocular case slung in most jaunty fashion. Let it not be imagined, however, that this gorgeous apparel was produced before we were well clear of Shanghai. There, amidst their own kith and kin, to savour of the European and his wardrobe is a reproach which no self-respecting Celestial would willingly incur ; they may go so far as to wear your discarded hats (and not a doubt but that your singlets, etc., are comfortably next their skin), but the donning of Western raiment, coram publico, is a thing they leave to those dmes damnies of native servitude, the " ridey-boys " of the Raceclub. Far afield, amidst the innocent peasantry of another province, these scruples vanish, and it seemed to me, watching the strut and swagger of these fellows in their borrowed finery, that they hoped to be mistaken for the lordly foreigner, to have their share of the curious awe of the vulgar. I cannot account in any other way for Ah Kong's unusual solicitude for my welfare, shown in frequent offers to carry the gun through villages. Even the beaters, in white sail-cloth trousers and police boots, had their little hours of gratified pride, their little circle of admirers in wayside hamlets.
And the bearing of these varlets, relying on the protection of the foreigner, is apt to be somewhat masterful towards the lord of the soil ; 'tls a matter that needs watching. To give an instance. I had wounded a hare one day, and Rex had followed it into a patch of thick jungle which grew round an ancient grave. Ah Kong disappeared after Rex, and in a little while there came from the thicket sounds of falling masonry and splintering wood. The hare had crawled through a hole in the brickwork into the mouldering coffin, where it lay dead amongst the bleached bones of the departed, a gruesome spectacle. By the time I reached the scene, Ah Kong had enlarged the opening enough to allow Rex to retrieve his quarry, which was done amidst much rattling of mortal remains and stirring of grey dust. Feeling like a body-snatcher, I rebuked Ah Kong with much strong language, reminding him of the respect due to ancestors and the fate of those that desecrate graves. There was a countryman working in the field close by, and, as we emerged with the hare, he came towards us.
"What will you do, Ah Kong," I said, "if he makes trouble ? This is none of my business."
"No fear," he replied." He no talkee nothing. This countryman velly stupid. All same damnful savage."
Which (proving true) seems to show that the most venerable customs of the Chinese may be affected by circumstances and environment, and that their morality is tempered by opportunity. And this brings them very near to ourselves.
At Llu Kuang-tao, on our way down stream, occurred a memorable moment with wild pig. Lambton, Thurlsby, and I were at breakfast. Jim had just flooded the hold of the Ark by the usual collapse of his india-rubber bath, and was sitting disconsolate on the flabby remains, when suddenly Bean-curd on the fore-deck shouted loudly for us to bring the guns. Rushing on deck (Jim was there also) we saw, about a quarter of a mile down river, seven black objects in the water. They were pig, said Bean-curd, swimming the river. The anchor was up in a moment, oars out, and the boat heading swiftly across stream to cut them oiT, visions of roast pork spurring the crew to howling activity. But alas for all fond hopes ! Within 300 yards of the porkers the Ark struck a shallow, and the race, so far as we were concerned, was over. Jim, with a towel about his loins, got out his Mauser, but by this time a crowd of Chinese, armed with poles and boat-hooks, had lined the bank so that shooting would have been dangerous. Helplessly we watched the gallant landing of the pigs, a 'Id mine of squealing quadrupeds and shouting men,a convulsive maelstrom of blows and grunts, which left three black corpses stretched upon the shelving bank. And as we pushed off from the shallows, the remarks of Bean-curd to Noah on the subject of navigation in general, and drunken navigation in particular, were not fit for the ears of decent men.
And so we made our way down stream, with varying fortunes and much content of body and mind ; nothing to mar our joyous days except the thought that each sunset brought us nearer to the end of our sweet liberties, nearer to desks and office-stools, and all the abominable machinery of our money-grubbing businesses. And every night the river gleamed, a pure line of molten silver under the stately-moving moon, and the north wind came gloriously singing through the dark passes of the hills, rustling in the shadowy sails of up-stream junks, speeding the swift wings of the wild swan, hurrying the serried squadrons of geese. I never hear, in the silence of a hushed city at night, the deep note of heron passing overhead or the cry of phantom curlew, but that, in a flash, I am back again in those moonlit reaches of the Chientang river.
Did I understand you to ask, O practical man, the cost of such a trip? A pity, is it not, that we must express the value of all things, even halcyon days, in terms of sordid sycee ? Yet such, I will admit, is the net result of all our philosophies reduced to their last word. Well, Jim, who carried the purse and made out the accounts on half a sheet of notepaper, avers that such bliss as ours is within the reach of any man who can afford to pay for it at the ridiculous rate of ten dollars-a pitiful pound sterling-per day ; and this might be reduced if you take the common tow instead of a private launch from Shanghai to Hangchow. The price of Noah's Ark, with crew, was $I.25 per diem, and the smaller boats $I.25 ; a beater's wage is 40 cents (tenpence), and of chickens and eggs you may buy enormous quantities for a laughable sum unless the cook is within range. Bread and meat are not to be had for a king's ransom, for this people knows them not.
But why should we talk of such things ? Find them out for yourselves as part of the day's work and play. Take care of your souls ; get you to the hills and look down on the green valleys, the laughing waters, the dim soft distances of this good rolling world, and, never fear, your journey's cost will be paid with a light heart.

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