By Our Kueiyang Correspondent Strangers to Kueichow, when entering the province from' the north for the first time during the summer months, are at once struck by the evidences of the silk producing industry which abound on every hand. 'Large baskets filled with cocoons outside the doors, or heaps of cocoons on the floor' indicate what time and labour have been expended on the silk worm.
Arriving at the city of Tsunyi he has an excellent opportunity for observing the different uses. to which the silk is put. The clinking of the loom attracts him to one place and there he sees numfers of workmen weaving the silk into material for clothing. Further on, a bamboo pole with skeins of differently coloured silks on it announces the fact that the Chinese know how to dye the silk and use it for sewing or embroider Bed Covers and Fishing Nets.
A presenta Chuan" or crooked stern be:
'They are used only on the Kungtan or the Wu river which rises in' the province of Kueichow, and_ flows into the Yangtze River at this cit This river flows very swiftly for the most part, with "many small rapids so that it is very difficult for an ordinary boat to navigate it. A shallow draft boat with an ordinary type of rudder does not give enough steering power in this rapid water, so that the boatmen had to invent some other way of managing their boats.
These boats are very much like those used on the large rivers, with the exception of the stern and steering arrangements. They are perhaps a little broader and of more shallow draft. For steering they use a long pole like that used by the small row boats and ferry boats all along the rivers of China. In fact, many of these boats carry two of these sweeps for steering, one of which is used in good water, and the longer one in very rapid water. On the larger boats this long sweep is fifty feet long so that you will that it requires a high pivot which to work it and also this pivot must be in the centre of the boat
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.