knot current
raises a choppy and heavy sea most dangerous for small craft, I have
seen four red-boats racing from different directions to rescue the
occupants of a capsized sampan. With sails fully hoisted before the
gale and smothered by the waves, in an incredibly short time they were
on the scene of the accident, where, rounding to, the work of salvage
was carried out in a most plucky and seamanlike manner. These boats
have no stem, the bows, which are square and about four feet in width,
sloping away underneath in a gentle curve, so that their tendency is
to skim over the water like a dish instead of cutting through it. They
are decked forrard flush with the gunnel for nearly half their length,
when a low cabin takes up the space as far as the well, which is quite
aft.

Flat-bottomed, and using lee-boards, they draw very little water,
while a single mast and sail of the light and convenient Chinese
pattern render them extremely handy. Hand-lines are looped round the
sides in the customary manner, but there is no cork belt.

Their qualities are so good that our own National Lifeboat Institution
would do well to study the model for use in places where a sandy beach
and shoal water make it sometimes impossible to launch the type of
lifeboat now in general use.

Gun-boats, or police junks, are ubiquitous. A very low freeboard and
no cabin, with the exception of a kind of deck-house quite aft, where
the helmsman stands, one mast hoisting a gracefully-cut sail with
alternate blue and white cloths, a small muzzle-loading cannon in the
bows, and a crew of ten or a dozen in quaint uniforms, who, when wind
fails, take to the sweeps, and standing up facing the direction in
which they are going, and keeping good time, propel the boat at a fair
pace. When at anchor an awning in blue and white stripes affords a
commodious shelter. Being official vessels they are spic and span in
light yellow varnish, and frequently fly a number of really beautiful
flags of marvellous design and brilliant colouring. The
_tout-ensemble_ is smart, weird, pleasing and eminently suitable for a
Drury Lane pantomime. Of shallow draught, and of size varying in
accordance with the waters they are destined to patrol, I have seen
them as large as twenty tons and as small as a skiff, having an old
flint gingall mounted forrard with all the circumstance of a 12-inch
gun.

Between the treaty-port of Ichang, which is a thousand miles from the
sea, and the