The piloting on this stretch of the river from Suifu up is a joke. There appears to be a new associ tion of pilots in Suifu, who control] the upper river here and what they do not know about piloting, would go a long way to making a success. fol captain of any steamer. However these gentlemen come aboard ers and take up comfortable al remarks on all sorts of things having no relevance to the navigation of the ship.
The political clouds are lowering. It is to be hoped that the war will Keep off until after the rice harvest] fat least has been gathered in and give the people a chance to get] cheaper rice than they have had for a year or two. The crop promises to be a bumper one and that will bring the price down, but if war starts it will ruin chances of cheaper rice.
If we hear the rumours aright, there will be three or four generals on each rang Sen, Liu Hsi and Lai Hsin-hui on the one side, while Liu Linen-whol, Ten Hsi-heo and Tien Song-iao will make the major generals of the other Now that Wu Pei-fu has dismissed Liu Th-chin from the Western border defence position, and requested Liu Linen-whol to take it, one wonders just where Lin Ili-chin will stand or fall.
The Balance of Strength There is a fairly even distribttion of the strength of the armies. It is said that there are about 50,000) under each party. Yang Sen has his source of supplies in Hankow while Liu Linen-whol is running the arsenal and powder factory at Ckengta at full. speed. However! this will not be sufficient to maintain him in a campaign.
Ag diplomacy towards the smaller factions, as Hsih Chin-long, Cheo Lise-cheng, and some others, may throw the balance either way] and make one side a little more Powerful. As it.stands, it looks as it Yang Sen would make steady progress towards Chengtu. The union of Lai Hsin-bui and Yang Sen, if such has' been consummated, (and we learn that it has), will do a lot for the strengthening of the province, and if we can but hear of stability in Peking, it will make a difference here. There is talk of creating an independent West Chins, but we have not heard that mud progress is being made in this line.
Meanwhile the "protecting commerce" bureau continues to protect commerce and collect huge sums from the shippers, and captain:
There are two avenues for water navigation up to Chengtu from Chungking. One divides from the main Yangtze at Luchow and passes along.up through Fusuen,—Luel Chang' Tze Chow and up to a place called Hsih Ch'ao, where the stream is too small to be navigable for argo boats. The second stream divides off at Suifu and passes up way. Thus they get. 155 Li nearer Chengtu than Hsih Ch'iao, The rate on a given cargo on the Luchow dividing river is 29 cents, while the rate on the same cargo would be 69 here at Kiating. Even at this the local commerce protecting bureau claims to be unable to collect enough to make ends meet, Still they cannot raise the rate a the preponderance of cargo is now going up the Luchow dividing river and while they have to carry cargo overland for 155 Li to Chengtu, even then it is cheaper landed in Chengtu than when sent by water this way, even going right to Chengtu in the same bottoms.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.