This latest freak of our treacherous river remains as great an obstruction to the traffices ever. All cargo has to be transhipped and carried a mile by coolies over the intervening rocks, while all passengers travelling between Chungking and Ichang have equally to under%o the inconvenience and delay of transferring themselves and their belongings to a new boat. This delay in their esse amounts to two or three days, but in the case of cargo it not seldom amounts to as many months. The owners of cargo-boats appear not yet Jable to make arrangements for interchanging their cargoes, and hence the junks have to pass the rapids, which they do emptied of everything movable and reduced to a mere shell, but they have, upon arrival above or below, to take up rank and wait their turn and, as several hundreds are waiting at each end and only four or five junks pass up in a day, the loss of time, which means the pay and feeding of 40 or 50 men to the jnnkmaster and correspondingly increased freights to the shipper, is really appalling.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.