The famine relief work in Hupeh is drawing to a close for this season, and all our camps are closing their contracts and settling their accounts preparatory to leaving for Hankow and home, while the workmen are also leaving in 2 stream for their various villages.
It was under these conditions, and with the encouragement of a rise in the water level that we embarked in the Anice launch and set off in a last attempt to reach Hsiang Yang, from which city our boat has so often been debarred by the low water.
A Tragic Srart.
Someone must have left his luck behind this time as well, for this trip was to provide us with the first casualty in the Famine Relief ranks on the Han river. Our Chinese cook was leaning over the back of the launch in the act of cleaning his teeth, when the boat gave a roll, he lurched, overbalanced, and vanished overboard. There seems to be some superstition amongst the Chinese to the effect that if a person is rescued from danger of that nature the rescuer makes himself responsible for the maintenance of the unfortunate for the rest of his or her life; or-else that the accident is an act of the gods, and it would be unwise to interfere with their judgements.
At any rate the Chinese who saw the accident made no move io tell those who were directing the boat until all chance of saving the unfortunate man from the swiftly Tunning stream was gone.
Five miles up stream came another check. The-river, for mys-A M OE E CE ILL LED COSI ESE AN AAS. SE AAA ott BRET RO a tet one terious reasons of its own, had raised an unknown sandbag in the channel, and our launch could not Pass in spite of our utmost efforts to push through. Determined not to be defeated, we hailed the shore, hired a sampan, and loading up some tinned goods, piled eight Chinese and myself, the only foreigner, on board, and started off again.- The wind was favourable for a start, and we plugged along at about five miles an hour very contentedly, while the Chinese engineer and myself put up a mat awning, laid out our bedding, and prepared to doze away our three day journey of some hundred miles or more. The wind, offended by our show of indifference, dropped suddenly, and the heat became unbearable, We realized then what we had let ourselves in for, but dipping an oil tin full of water from the
some alum, and after boiling iron
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.