ye From Batang to the banks of the Yangtze, here called 'The River of Golden Sand,' is aday'srido by the ordinary road running south, but by crossing " steep ridge over the river beyond the lamasery it i be but seven miles away. Following in the wake of a company of pilgrims we made the day's journey to the ferry that crosses at Dubslong on the Lhassa main road. About half the distance from Batang to Dubalong is made along the course of the ver which hero is of the same mudd swirling character so well known to al who have been dragged from Ichang to chungking along its tortuous course. We did a part of the journey in a coracle, made of ox-hides stretched over willow rods, in shape like a battered wash-bowl and light enough to be carried home on a man's back.
The novelty of the thing induced us to try it, though it would have required a very little persuasion to get out of it before we had well started.
Putting our few things in the bottom, our boatman, @ rough and tumble specimen of humanity, placed hit in what presumably was the bow, and then invited us togoaboard. The Bishop stepped gingerly in and squatted down.
"How does she feel?" **Not very stable," was the reassuring reply, and then I got one Jez over the side and the contrivance began to describe n circle, whereupon I came down, a help on the top of the bagyag The bo'sun grinned and helped to god ie straightened out, then seizing a rud tnentary paddle—if other description were needed it would be " piece of board little broader at one end than the other—and with this he '*spooned"' us out into the current and that was all there was to it. have a superfluity and spread it over the leaking plice and we went along as before, reminding me of the lower Yangtze boatmen who repair rheic ordinary leaks with rags and tallow, 'This fellow was even more economical. At Dualung we crossed the river in the ferry boat with a crowd of pilgeins who were making their autumn pilgrimage to a celebrated lamasery some days' journey away. Mon and women were travelling together, each with a huge kaapsack bundle of enables, under the convoy of young lam, any of the pleasantest men we inet. The pilgrims were from the country north of Batang, and only differed from th ordinary Tibetans we met on the road that the men wore their tunics looped higher, and thus displayed more of themselves than would be considered decorous even with kilts, The ferry was in charge of Chi who had constructed the boats—an noc yet acquired by the natives, who have no other boats than the coracles w had just used—and, of course, the Chin demanded pay in addition to keeping the crowd waiting on their pleasure. Now came the weakness in the Tibetan currency
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.