However, we did, as the reader will be able to imagine, eventually get
away, amid the firing of countless deafening crackers, after having
watched the sacrifice of a cock to the God of the River, with the
invocation that we might be kept in safety. Poling and rowing through a
maze of junks, our little floating caravan, with the two magnates on
board, and their picul of rice, their curry and their sugar, and
slenderest outfits, bowled along under plain sail, the fore-deck packed
with a motley team of somewhat dirty and ill-fed trackers, who whistled
and halloed the peculiar hallo of the Upper Yangtze for more wind.

The little township of Ichang was soon left astern, and we entered
speedily to all intents and purposes into a new world, a world
untrammelled by conventionalism and the spirit of the West.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: This was written at the time I was in Hankow. When I
revised my copy, after I had spent a year and a half rubbing along with
the natives in the interior, I could not suppress a smile at my
impressions of a great city like Hankow. Since then I have seen more
native life, and--more native dirt!--E.J.D.]

[Footnote B: The _Kinsha_ was the first British gunboat on the Upper
Yangtze.]




SECOND JOURNEY