rises, as an ancient Celestial is usually on hand for the
collection of tiny toll. Narrow bridges, rude steps cut in the face of
the cliffs, trails along narrow ledges, over rocky ridges, down across
gulches, and anon through loose shale on ticklishly sloping banks,
characterize the passage through the canon. The sun is broiling hot, and
my knee swollen and painful. It is barely possible to crawl along at a
snail's pace by keeping my game leg stiff; bending the knee is attended
with agony. Frequent rests are necessary, and an examination reveals my
knee badly inflamed.

Hours are consumed in scrambling for three or four miles up and down
steps, and over the most abominable course a bicycle was ever dragged,
carried, up-ended and lugged over. At the end of that time I reach a
temple occupying a romantic position in a rocky defile, and where a
flight of steps leads down to the water's edge. All semblance of anything
in the nature of a continuous path terminates at the temple, and hailing
a sampan bound up stream, I obtain passage to the northern extremity of
the canyon.

The sampan is towed by a team of seven coolies, harnessed to a small,
strong rope made of bamboo splint. It is interesting, yet painful, to see
these men clambering like goats about the rocky cliffs, sometimes as much
as a hundred feet above the water; one of the number does nothing else
but throw the rope over protuberant points of rock. One would naturally
imagine that Chinese enterprise would be sufficient to construct
something like a decent towpath through this caiion, considering the
number of boats towed through it daily; but everything in China seems to
be done by the main strength and awkwardness of individuals.

The boatmen seem honest-hearted fellows; at noon they invite me to
participate in their frugal meal of rice and turnips. Passing sampans are
greeted by the crew of our boat with the intelligence that a Fankwae is
aboard; the news being invariably conveyed with a droll "ha-ha!" and
received with the same. Indeed, the average Chinese river-man or
agriculturist, the simple-hearted children of the water and the soil,
seem to regard the Fankwae as a creature so remarkably comical, that the
mere mention of him causes them to laugh.

Near the end of the canon the boat is moored at a village for the day,
and my knee feeling much better from the rest, I pursue my course up the
bank of the river. The bank is level in a general sense, but much c