For the new rapid is not like the ancient orthodox rapids which only demanded ordinary skilful navigation to be.passed in comparative safety. The new obstruction is a terrific torrent, in appearance much like the whirlpool rapid below Niagara Falls. The whole volume. of the mighty Yangtze, compressed into a channel eighty yards wide, is dammed back and escaping through this narrow channel in_a slope some ten feet fall, rushes down at a tremendous pace in huge foaming breakers. Below, where the river expands again, are hideous whirlpools which ave linble to catch up a descending junk and hurl her against the rocks. We ourselves witnessed a hi salt-jank, empty of course, thus caught. She struggled over an hour going up in the eddy, descending the rapid only to be caught up again, shipping small sens each time. At length the efforts of sixty men straining at her big oars and yuloh succeed ed in extricating her. Towing up, all depends on the security of the biinboo towlines, a large empty junk taking 400 men to haul her through, literally: inch by inch. The trackers go along the top of a wall of rock, now about sixty feet above the river level, the junk being underneath and out of their sight. Tt is against this jagged rock wall that descending junks are liable to be thrown by the current if they escape the whirlpool on their left, On the eve of the Chinese New Year a junk rowed by eighteen mon was caught by the eddy on the right, before the descent was completed, and dashed against these rocks. Six' lives were saved by the red boats but twelve were lost. Safety lies in descending the rapid in the centro where the compression has arched the water and piled it up high, above the level of the eddies on exch side; to hit this centre the descending junk has to steer between a gap in the reef over which the water falls before it forms the rapid. © The reef was harmless originally, as the main body of the river lay to the south of it now the new Iand-slide has. pushed up to this reef, and over and through it the whole river now passes.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.