The eldest son of a physician, Archibald Little was born in London in 1838. During his youth he studied in Germany and quickly learnt the language. In 1859 he arrived in China as a tea taster for a German firm and spent the next 50 years traveling the country. Fluent in Chinese, he was one of the rare Europeans in China to immerse himself in the native culture. Up until 1898, no one had ever attempted to take a steamship on the Yangtze above Ichang, although Chungking, some 400 miles further up the river, had been declared a port open to western powers. The difficulty in this stretch of the Yangtze is the numerous set of gorges and rapids extending almost the entire length of its course. For thousands of years Chinese junks were towed through this perilous piece of waterway. Multiple ropes, made of bamboo fiber and stretching up to a mile, were rigged from a junk to men onshore who painstakingly dragged the vessels inch by inch up the river. Those onboard used long poles to push the junk away from the shore as they progressed. If the wind was right, the sails of the junk were also unfurled. At the more difficult rapids (which are too numerous to count) additional men onshore were available to haul a junk through. This situation was complicated by the fact that only one junk at a time could be hauled through a rapid, sometimes creating lines of vessels waiting days for their turn to come. Large portions of the upper river consist of mounds of broken rock ranging in size from a pebble to a house. Ropes regularly chafed and caught, sometimes breaking and sending a vessel out of control into the torrent. Whirlpools and eddies litter the river making control of a vessel, backwards and adrift, extremely dangerous. One of the few government tasks that was well organized at the time was the lifeboat service. At the base of each rapid a manned lifeboat awaited any poor soul who found himself in the water. These individuals were paid a daily wage in addition to a set bounty for each individual they rescued. Little estimated losses at about two and a half percent of traffic. This was in large part due to the use of good pilots and lifeboat crews. This figure, however, does not take into account the significant number of damaged vessels which, colliding with some rock or boulder, managed to beach themselves and effect repairs en route. Junk traffic generally took place on the upper Yangtze in winter, when the river was at its lowest and the shore well exposed. Traffic could continue in summer at water's height, but the expense of trafficking the river doubled due to the additional men required to overcome the increased current. Later, when steamship travel commenced on the river, these vessels were generally used in summer as the higher water levels permitted their drafts. Junks then took over again as winter set in Little had been an ardent advocate of steamship use in the upper river. In 1883 he wrote an exceptional work, "Through the Yang-tse Gorges or Travel and Trade in Western China" (published 1888). This book recounts his journey by junk from Hankow to Chungking. Throughout the book he urges steamships to attempt the trip but it was not until fifteen years later that the voyage was achieved. And who made that first voyage? Why, Archibald Little of course, in his tiny steamboat Lee-chuen (apparently he had grown sick of waiting for the rest of the world to take the initiative). It should be noted that prior to the successful navigation of the upper Yangtze by the Lee-chuen, Archibald Little had earlier built a large paddlesteamer, SS Kuling, to attempt the trip. Unfortunately he built the vessel in 1887 and, pursuant to the Chefoo Convention of 1876, Chungking would only become an open port for foreign trade when a Chinese steamer had successfully navigated the gorges. When Little brought SS Kuling to Ichang to attempt the trip to Chungking, Chinese officials refused to permit him to continue as no Chinese steamer had yet made the voyage. In 1890 the treaty was modified and Chungking was declared an open port. It was another eight years before Little made his successful attempt in his steamboat Lee-chuen in 1898. In 1900, the river gunboats HMS Woodcock and HMS Woodlark repeated the trip. Archibald Little had not been idle, however, and later that year he navigated a large paddle steamer he had built, SS Pioneer, on the same journey. Soon thereafter SS Pioneer was commandeered by the Royal Navy in order to evacuate Europeans from Chungking during the Boxer Rebellion (97 Europeans and 60 Chinese were successfully rescued). The Pioneer was found to be such an excellent vessel that the Royal Navy purchased her in 1901. Renamed HMS Kinsha, she became the Royal Navy Yangtze flagship until 1921, when she was replaced by HMS Bee. Before steamships, travel up the 400 miles between Ichang and Chungking would take at least a month, much longer for larger vessels. On the introduction of steamships that time was cut to just 36 hours.
A desire to see the upper Yangtse in flood-time induced us to venture upon a voyage from Ichang to Kweifu and on to Wan Hien, traversing the four great gorges and the principal rapids at a season when few care to brave the perils of navigation. The up-river trade from Ichang to Chung-king practically comes to a stop by the middle of June, and is not resumed before the middle of September or later, according to the condition of the river and the amount of rainfall in West China. Those who, in the usual course of travel, have ascended the upper Yangtse only in the winter season, when the junk-traffic is at its highest, would not recognize the river in summer, when the freshets have come down and entirely changed its aspect, from that of a clear mountain stream, interrupted by a series of falls or steps with long smooth reaches between, to that of a huge brown torrent entirely filling its bed and bounded throughout either by vertical cliffs or by steep mountain slopes - rocks all "submerged full fathoms five," and deep water everywhere. The innumerable winter rapids are either obliterated entirely or metamorphosed into swift races; a rare junk is seen here and there sailing up in the eddies and long backwaters, or creeping slowly, towed by a double gang of trackers, round some awkward point; but generally the river appears deserted, the exuberant life and animation that surrounds the rapids in winter has entirely vanished, and the sleepiness of summer heat appears to have invaded the sparse towns and villages, while in between, for days at a time, one might imagine one's self to be exploring a new and uninhabited country. The cause of this cessation of traffic in the summer season is not so much the danger (that from the huge whirlpools is really serious), and which, to do Chinese boatmen justice, would hardly prove a deterrent, but the expense of the voyage is doubled ; heavier crews are needed, and these have to be paid and fed for two, and sometimes three, months instead of one; correspondingly high freights have to be paid, and this again deters shippers ; the north-east monsoon, which may be relied upon to provide a fair wind up the gorges from November to April, has come to an end, and without a fair wind parts of the gorges are actually impassable by large junks relying on man-power alone, as they may in summer have to wait days for a fair wind. To sum up, in short, when the upper Yangtse is navigable by steamers it is unnavigable by native craft, and vice versa; to the observance of this condition are due the successful voyages of the steamship Pioneer (now metamorphosed into His Majesty's gum-vessel Kinsha) in the summer of 1900; and, conversely, to its neglect may be attributed the loss of the German steamer Suihsiang in the month of December in the same year.
Our voyage up the. rapids, starting on June 14, 1901, occupied roughly as many days as, at the same date late last year, the Pioneer occupied hours; thus to reach the big rapid, the "Yeh-tan," about 60 miles above Ichang, took us six days, as against the Pioneer's eight hours on June 12, 1900. We, on our third day out, passed the Tung-ling rapid, 35 miles distant from Ichang, on the rocks in which the Suihsiang was wrecked on the very morning of her departure from Ichang. This "pierced mountain" rapid is caused by the outflow from the Grand Mitan gorge passing through a nest of rocks, amidst which in winter the river forces its way in numerous winding channels. In June these rocks are deeply submerged, and only traceable by the boiling water as the 7-knot current sweeps over them. The long time spent by us in reaching this point was due to the difficulties of the "Yao-tsa-ho" below, as the winding reach, some 15 miles in length, which connects the Ichang and Mitan gorges, is called by the boatmen. The river valley here widens out, and, whereas in the two gorges the stream has cut its way down through the limestone mountain, making itself a passage with vertical walls 1000 to 2000 feet in height, in this connecting reach the river has to contend with a granitic formation, which it has disintegrated and broken up into piles of gigantic boulders, which lie strewn along the floor of the here widened valley in vast mounds such as none but Yangtse trackers, trained to them from childhood, would attempt to climb over. The " points " thus formed convert the Yao-tsa-ho into a continuous rapid, which the junk has to surmount without ever being able to gain a straight lead for its tow-lines; hence a perpetual struggle, which the imperturbable Chinaman calmly accepts as all in the day's work, but which is most exasperating to the impatient foreigner. To the geologist this reach is peculiarly interesting as the one point in the navigable Yangtse at which igneous rocks lie athwart the river's course, and where a dyke of porphyry has been cut through by the stream. Immediately above the Mitan gorge the valley, though still bounded by precipitous mountains rising to 3000 and 4000 feet, opens out, leaving a bench on either hand upon which are built the busy village of Hsin-tan (" New rapid ") and the picturesque houses of prosperous farmers and junkowners, forming a coup d'oeil, that can hardly be excelled in any part of the world. Writing of the Hsin-tan as it appears in January, Mrs. Bishop remarks, "No description can convey an idea of the noise and turmoil of the Hsin-tan. I realized it best by my hearing being affected for some days afterwards. The tremendous crash and roar of the cataract, above which the yells and shouts of hundreds of straining trackers are heard, mingled with the ceaseless beating of drums and gongs, some as signals, others to frighten evil spirits, make up a pandemonium which can never be forgotten." If this indefatigable traveller could have seen the Hsin-tan when we passed up-all its rocks and boulders hidden, the shanties with which these are covered in winter all disappeared, the trackers having gone into the country for fieldwork ; nothing but a smooth river, half a mile or more wide, with scarce a junk visible; the fine farmhouses and residences that dot the steep slopes on the south bank slumbering amidst their groves of bamboo and fruit trees ; the long straggling terraced village on the north bank equally asleep in the June sunshine, with not even a dog awake to bark, she would have hardly credited the change, such is the contrast between the upper Yangtse in summer, when it has already risen 50 or 60 feet above its winter level, and may yet rise another 60 feet before autumn. Our light-draft junk warped up the short, smooth, steep slope of the Yeh-tan, a fall of about 8 feet, without difficulty. The two tow-lines are carried by a straight lead to and warped round bollards fixed in a wide solid stone bunding built for the purpose well above high-water mark, the whole operation, including the laying out the lines, involving us in scarcely two hours' delay. I may mention that our junk is one of the large "four-roomed " kwatsze, as the upper Yangtse houseboats are called, 80 feet long by 12 feet beam, 4 feet deep, and drawing light about 2 feet, easy to tow, and a fast sailer with her lofty mast and large light cotton lugsail. We have forty-seven men engaged in all-permanent crew of ten always on board, twenty-four trackers on shore, eight men in the tender constantly shifting the trackers from our junk to the shore, and from one bank to the other, or ferrying them across side streams and past otherwise impassable obstructions, and finally a crew of five men in the lifeboat, which follows close as a precaution in case of disaster. Above the Yeh-tan our progress was slow ; the river was very bad, and the whirlpools at times baffling, notably that at the Niu-ko or Ox-head rapid, at the point where H.M.S. Woodlark was whirled against the rock bank and had her fore compartment entirely smashed in ; this last was later rebuilt on the spot by her able commander and gallant crew--her engineer especially--and thus against all expectation she was enabled to pursue her voyage to Chungking. The record of this noteworthy event, which her crew painted in huge letters on the rock at the time, was submerged as we passed up. Then through the 22-miles-long Great Gorge of Wushan," which it took us three whole days of hard struggle to surmount, into the comparitively open water that unites this chasm with the still worse chasm of the last of the four great gorges, the " Bellows " gorge, situated three miles below the celebrated city of Kueifu, and on the left-hand portal of which stands what is left of the " White Emperor's City."
Before reaching the lower entrance of the Bellows gorge, and opposite the Hoang-tsang-pei, a swirling rapid caused by one of the innumerable huge "cones of dejection," which small innocent-looking side streams appear to have vomited into the main river as the result of a one-time cloud-burst in the mountains behind, a very remarkable cleft in the 3000 feet which here forms the river's right bank. compels the admiration of the traveller. This cleft, the opposing cliffs of which may be half a mile apart, is well named by the natives the "Tso-kia Mitt," or "False Gorge," the legend being that when the Emperor Yu cut out the gorges through the mountains, that is, late Szechuan from the rest of China, and so drained off the great red basin, he at first set to work on the Tso-kai Hsia, when, finding no way round, he diverted his attack to the higher mountains through which the Bellows gorge now makes its way, and cut out the present passage in its place. Through this narrow passage was now running a fierce torrent, the overflow of the lake-like expanse above. So far we had only experienced a recurrence of the minor accidents incidental to junk travel, tow-lines breaking, sheering out (ta chang) in the rapids (equivalent to missing stays at sea), and the like, but here our voyage came near to an abrupt conclusion. A strong fair wind that set in towards evening induced our pilot to attempt to sail through this a-mile long gorge ; under press of sail we were stemming the current famously, but the still fast-rising river had bred such terrific whirlpools that our large well-found junk proved like a cork at their mercy. We swung round and all but capsized; luckily the men, with much difficulty, succeeded in lowering the sail and bringing the boat up under a protecting point without damage. No such good fortune, however, attended two largo cargo junks ahead of us, which we overtook at the entrance of the gorge ; one of these, a vessel chartered by the Sechuan viceroy carrying munitions of war from Shanghai to Chengtu (of which a continuous stream, including machine guns, has been flowing west for two years past) was whirled against the rock bank on the right and stove in and sunk, her crew escaping and the roof of the junk being just awash, so that the contents may possibly be salved when the water falls. The second junk, a fifty-ton cargo-boat laden with cotton yarn, sailed up the swift rapid in splendid form and disappeared in the twilight. I asked our pilot, who had now secured our boat for the night, why he too did not take advantage of the fair wind, which was still increasing in strength, to get through this difficult gorge. He replied that he could not feel sure of getting through before dark. At this moment a shout from our men, and just as the sudden darkness of the latitude had shut in, the big junk drifted by on her beam ends, having capsized in mid-stream. She was barely visible, but the cries of "Chiu Ming !" ("Save life ! ") were heartrending, just audible above the roar of the rapid. It was now pitch dark, but I suggested to our accompanying lifeboat to go after them ; the helmsman. however--and rightly, I think--said he dared not confront the whirlpools in the dark. Two days later we learnt in Kweifu that about half the crew had been thrown overboard and lost, and that the boat herself, if still floating and not wrecked on the way, could hardly be brought up nearer than in the tranquil water off Ichang.
The Bellows gorge averages 300 yards in width, but is narrowed by projecting rock-spits in three places to half this width, and below these rage, at this season, foaming whirlpools. The spit under which we were moored for the night was composed of a very hard limestone and chert, and had the appearance of furnace slag. Rising some 30 to 50 feet above the present water-level, it is covered in the late summer freshets, and so the whole surface is water-worn; but the rock is too hard to be cut away in potholes, as we see has been, and still is being, done in countless similar reefs up and down the river. At the narrowest channel in this gorge, close to its upper end, the stanchions and rock-holes are still visible at low water from which chains were stretched across the Yangtse during the romantic period of the wars of the " Three Kingdoms," which ushered in the fall of the great Han dynasty in the third century of our era. All this region is rich in "song and story." Below this spot we see to-day, as fresh as it issued from the hands of the masons of old, the extraordinary relic known as Meng-liang's ladder-a series of squared holes chiselled into the hard limestone cliff, here about 500 feet vertical, each hole 14 inches in diameter and about 2 feet in depth, into which were inserted wooden beams up which Meng-liang's soldiers either ascended for attack or descended to procure water-it is not positively known which. The last emperor of the Hans, Liu-peh, was the builder of the "Peh-tich'eng," or "White Emperor's City," so called after its supposed Celestial founder and patron, a beautiful temple in whose honour survives to this day. Its wooded terraces command a striking view of the gorge down stream, with its highest cliff towering up some 3000 feet, and of the picturesque city of Kweifu built on the left bank of the lakelike reach 3 miles above. We passed a restless night, rocked in the swell of the rapid and disturbed by the roar of the whirlpools, which increased in violence as the river continued to swell in volume with the still-rising freshets, the total rise in the night being about 10 feet, necessitating constant shifting of the boat's moorings. At daylight the next morning we crossed over in the lifeboat to the left bank, and climbed up the steep rock-bank to the hew road. This is a road built by a former viceroy in the fifteenth year of Kwangshu (A.D. 1888), from Kweifu westwards to the Hupeh frontier, a distance of about 50 miles, where, traversing the gorges, the road is carried by a gallery cut in the limestone cliffs and fenced by a low stone balustrade. Had the road been carried on farther 80 miles to Ichang, it would have been of inestimable value to travellers to and from Szechwan, who have practically no choice of any other than the Yangtse route. As it is, the road is useless; it ends in an absolute curl-de-sac in the middle of the Wushan gorge, and is already falling into disrepair. Squatters have not been slow to take advantage of the terraced portion to grow crops on, and have pulled down the stone balustrade in places and used it as foundations for their adobe cottages. So it is everywhere in China : a spasmodic attempt at sonic reform or improvement is made by some rare, public-spirited official or man of wealth; he is not seconded, and his work is rendered useless by the apathy and ill-will of the people generally. It seems to me hopeless to look for any practical reforms in China unless under European supervision, capable of enforcing discipline and order as in the foreign settlements ; left alone, the Chinese are incapable of what we call progress. If this road were to be completed and sufficiently enlarged, Kweifu would be brought within three-quarters of a day of Ichang, and thousands of lives, now annually lost in the rapids of the four great gorges, would be saved. But there is no present likelihood that this road over will be completed. In a few more decades, what has been already began will have fallen or been pulled to pieces and utterly forgotten. The White Emperor's City, the western terminus of the New road, is now nothing but a small village. A portion of the old concrete wall is still in existence, pierced by an ancient gateway, through which the path leads on to the high-walled city of Kweifu, 3 miles above. It was here that Liu-peh made his last stand, and was killed A.D. 221, and so the famous flan dynasty succumbed to the short-lived Wei. It is hard, looking down at this season on the smooth lake 200 feet below, to conceive the existence of a manufacturing city in its centre, which is annually submerged each summer and again annually reconstructed each winter as the water subsides. Yet on this sandbank, now submerged several fathoms, I have seen the smoke of countless brine distilleries, and have walked among the brine wells, around which thousands of workmen were busily employed on the different processes, hastening to make the most of the short winter of work. In Kweifu coal is cheap (about 4s. a ton), as also plentiful. Arrived at Kweifu, the perils of the voyage are practically over at least, at this season. Hence to Wan lien we had not the trace of a rapid ; the bottle neck of the Bellows gorge had dammed up the water, and the fierce Miao-chi and the dreaded Hsin-lung-tan were absolutely non-existent. The river, now fully 100 feet above its winter level, and half to three-quarters of a mile wide, flowed smoothly between green slopes, not a vestige of rock being visible. The contrast between the deep bright green of the maize, which now covers the lower slopes, and the chocolate-coloured water, in which their feet were immersed, was very striking, as was the total absence of life and movement at the site of the New Grand Rapid, formed by the landslip of 1896. No trace of the town existed, the houses mostly removed, the site being under water; but on high ground above is a handsome and extensive building -a new Buddhist temple dedicated to Wang Se, the patron saint of boatmen, and subscribed for by the junkmen, to whom this rapid is a lasting terror in the winter season, for want of a few tons of dynamite judiciously expended. One thing our summer voyage on the upper Yangtse definitely impressed upon us, and that is that a permanent and profitable steamservice is simply a question of supplying the needful capital for suitable boats. Is this navigation to lie carried on or to be abandoned to others by the British, who have been the first to successfully attempt it? In any case, we reached Wan Hien, fourteen days out from Ichang, with the firm conviction that this would prove our last ascent of the upper Yangtse in a Chinese junk.
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