From Gretchen Fitkia, Ichang, July 16.
I went for a vide this morning on Ichang's new lake. It covers about three square miles.
This morning, when the current' of the river was running at 8.2 Knots per hour, the back wash broke through the railway embankment and flooded the area from the Scottish Mission to the golf course and from the bund to the railway embankment to the north. The current was coming in so rapidly that to get through the narrow opening where the dike had washed away, our boatmen had to jump out and pull us by rope across—tracking up Ichang rapid! The water varies in depth from a few feet to "nine and no bottom." It is over the walls which surround compounds and many Chinese houses are completely under water. Going down a narrow street, we were constantly bumping into window shutters which had been left open.
Inside the house, we could see tables and chairs floating about. Sometimes @ man inside was swimming amongst the debris and handing out a few precious bottles to his comrades outside. A cat clinging to an eaves trough above the water looked badly out of his element but, just the same, he resisted our attempts to rescue him and ran frightened along the tiled roof.
Out in the more open area above the wide maloo we were constantly passing numbers of sampans loaded with household furniture, chickens and pigs, and the numerous family. The British-American Tobacco Company office and house is under water to the second storey. The nine-foot wall is just covered. The firm's representative was standing on his upper verandah superintending the letting down of his boxes and bags into the sampan below which was already filled with office files and furniture.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.