Thrills and Thankfulness: The Sampan Squeeze and the Silent City: Oddities of Life in Small Ports Another instance of the tradiional initiative of American girls, venturing far afield alone, provided in the return to Shanghai recently of a young lady well known in. the local community who took pleasure trip through the much-Samed Gorges of the Yangtze River, She commenced her journey about the middle of July, and was fortunate in being able to book passage on one of the Yangtze Rapids ships, the -Ling, which had been in dry dock in Shanghai, and was available or the entire journey to Chungking. In the ordinary course of events it would-be necessary to book different steamers from here to. Hankow, from Hankow to Ichang and from Tehang through Gorges Chungking. She arrived in Chungking on August 1.
The trip is described as "uneventful" as trips go, considering that -much advice had been received prior to departure regarding the "fearful isks" which the young lady was: running in contemplating such a Journey.
A Sampan Bully navigation, and showing the various levels of the water in feet fon the side of the rock may show 50 feet and at what from the steamer's deck seems 10 feet above the 100 feet mark appears. Frore the steamer's deck it is a little difficult to realize the immense heights of the towering cliffs, which, by comparison, make the steamers appear like toy-boats. A good illu tration of this impression was py7- vided through the fact that a fleet of steamers, large and small, were' coming through the Gorges at the same time, and one could look back and front and make comparisons with the scenery rising on each side of the iver.
During the passage the river wa at-an unusually high level so that the thrills of a perilous passage through those rapids where rocks appear at lower levels diminished.
There was generally a good breeze on the river, and the passage through the Gorges was exceedingly cool, owing to the overcast weather which characterizes the vicinity Chungking a large part of the time.
A certain amount of anti-foreign ism was traceable throughout, she said, and in what might have been an unal Jineldent had not the captain of the ship noted what was going on and intervened. Arrangements had been made with one of the innumerable boatmen hovering round the steamer to take the lady ashore. Whereupon big coolie from another boat, obviously of the bullying class, arrived on the scene to lend his unsolicited assistance in getting the Jugeage from the ship into the small boat, This had not been necessary a9 the lady's boatman had already commenced the work Thirty cents, however, were given to dhe interloper, who had by this time' Snotalled himself in the sampan with the lady passenger and the boatman, Fie bean to demand more money for his scant labours and, with the Indy's endeavour to make it quite ¢lear that she would pay no more and: as the boat began to move off from the side of the ship, the big fellow kicked at her, leaving a dirty mark upon the skirt of her white frock, Fortunately, however, as undoubtedly the situation would have developed - when the sampan was further away from the ship, the captain of the steamer had seen what was transpiring from deck and shouted to the boatman to return the vessel, where she was provid-with a suitable escort to tu: shore. The officious coolie thers upon jumped into his own sampan and further incident was avoided.
Unfriendly Chungking,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.