Donald, H.M.'s Minister at Peking, we are enabled to publish the following' extract from Consul Bourne's report On our arrival at Ichang, I heard that there hed arisen between Yunyanghsien and this place (Wanhsien), a very serious rapid on the Yangtze, that was completely blocking the river, and by which our progress by water would be stopped.
On the 7th instant, we left Yunyang at Ga.m. and reached the new rapid at noon, It is situated in laticade 30 deg. 54 min. 30 secs. and in estimated longitude (from Blakiston's Chart), 109 deg. 16 min.—about half—mile above a small rapid called Tachang.
There was formerly no rapid here and no houses. There is now much the worst rapid in the Yangtze, over which junks can only go empty, and even so with the greatest danger. All junks, whether bound up or down stream, have to be emptied and their cargo carried at least half-a.mile. No steamer could ascend this rapid. The rapid was formed at 10 p.m. on the 30th of September last by a landslip that occurred after forty days of rain; and since that date a hundred junks and a thousand men are said to have been lost.
The place has now the air of a mining camp with four to five hundred mat-shed shops and a late population of trackers, and of the agents of merchants and junk-owners. The cost of crossing the rapid, transhipping cargo, ete., may be put at one to two per cent on the value of the goods.
While the water was high the extent of the obstruction was not apparent; as the river sank the rapid became impassable to upward-bound junks and remained so for about a month; on the 4th instant (December) the first upward-bound junk was hauled over again; and there seems, unfortunately, a great probability that as the river drops further, the rapid will become again impracticable to the upward-bound traffic.
'A block of ground measuring 700 yards north and south by 400 yards east and west as the crow flies has fallen and slipped down from the slope of the mountain on the north bank, a distance of 150 yards, reducing the breadth of the river from 250 to 80 yards. The north edge of the slip has fallen a height of 300 to 400 feet, bringing down immense blocks of hard sandstone that there formed a heavy bluff about 700 feet above the river. Beneath the sandstone lay soft red shale and below that very soft lightly compressed grey sand—all lying in strata with a dip nearly in the direction taken by the slip. Below this probably lay hard sandstone—for such is rock at the level of the river on both banks.
The soft red shale and the grey sand have split vertically on the north edge of the slip. On the top of the strata above lay a debris of clay, shale, etc., with heavy blocks of hard sandstone interspersed, cultivated with rice and sugar-cane.
The following theory might explain the slip; the strata of soft stone being unable to support the masses above them, satur rated with continued rain, snapped; and the whole slid down along the face of the underlying hard sandstone, and nearly in the direction of its dip.
The point has now been washed clean of the softer earth and only a confused heap of large blocks of sandstone and shale remain. As there was no rapid before the slip, there can be no great difference in level between the river above and below the obstruction, the removal of which would, one imagines, present no great difficulties to a foreign engineer; never theless the Chinese are taking no steps to remove the slip; but, on the contrary, are making roads on both banks of the river, out of Government funds and subscriptions of the Trade Guilds at Wanhsien and Chungking, as if they regarded the rapid as permanent.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.