e it. "Besides," said my guide, "the Chinese are
not curious." I wonder? Whether or no they are curious, they are
certainly superstitious. Apropos, a gunboat ran aground on the Yangtse.
The river was falling, and there seemed no chance of getting off for
months. The officers made up their minds to it, and fraternised with the
priest of a temple on the bank. The priest one day asked for a
photograph of the boat. They gave him one, and he asked them to dinner.
After dinner he solemnly burnt the photograph to his god. And--"would
you believe it?"--next day a freshet came down and set the vessel
afloat. Which shows how superstitions are generated and maintained in a
world so little subject to law, on the surface of it, as ours.

My anecdote has brought me to the Yangtse, and it is on a river-boat
that I write. Hour after hour there passes by the panorama of hills and
plain, of green wheat and yellow rape, of the great flood with its
flocks of wild duck, of fishers' cabins on the shore and mud-built
thatched huts, of junks with bamboo-threaded sails skimming on flat
bottoms, of high cliffs with monasteries perched on perilous ledges, of
changing light and shade, of burning sunset and the stars. Travelling by
river is the best of all travelling--smooth, slow, quiet, and soothingly
contemplative. All China, I am informed by some pessimists, is in a
state of anarchy, actual or latent. It may be. But it is difficult to
believe it among these primitive industrious people living and working
as they have lived and worked for 4000 years. Any other country, I
suppose, in such a crisis as the present would be seething with civil
war. But China? When one puts the point to the foreigner who has been
talking of anarchy he says, "Ah! but the Chinese are so peaceable! They
don't mind whether there's a Government or no. They just go on without
it!" Exactly! That is the wonderful thing. But even that seems to annoy
the foreigner. Once more, what _does_ he want? I give it up.

III

IN THE YANGTSE GORGES

At the upper end of the gorge poetically named "Ox Liver and Horse
Lungs" I watched the steamboat smoking and splashing up stream. She had
traversed in a few hours the distance I, in my houseboat, had taken
three days to cover; and certainly she is much more convenient and much
more comfortable. That, however, is not necessarily an advantage. What
may be urged with some force is that travelling by steamboat is more
humane. It disp