current, serve as a protection against being pooped.

One or two masts with the ordinary Chinese sails, an immense sweep in
the bows as an aid in turning, and a strong rudder with an enormous
tiller, are the chief items of equipment.

On the voyage down, which takes less than a week, a crew of ten or a
dozen would be sufficient for a medium-sized junk, but for the return
journey against stream, and which takes from four to eight weeks
according to the strength of the current, from forty to a hundred
trackers are necessary in addition to the regular hands.

As in the Gorges the river is liable to freshets, which in a few hours
may cause a rise of thirty or forty feet, the foreshore is at an
uncertain height, for which reason, probably, no towing-paths have
been made.

Upward-bound junks, in addition to their sails, have an immense
hawser, made of twisted bamboo splits, leading from the top of the
mainmast to the river bank, and to the shore end of which, for a
length of about forty to a hundred feet, the trackers fasten the
yokes, with one of which each man is supplied, and which are long
enough to admit a play of ten or fifteen feet on either side of the
cable.

It is a stirring sight to see a big junk being bodily forced by wind
and manual power against a strong current. The trackers swarm over
rocks and mounds along the foreshore like a pack of hounds, singing,
laughing and shouting as they go, the mainmast bends beneath the heavy
strain, the hawser is cleared from jutting boulders by intrepid
swimmers, who in pursuit of their vocation must often plunge into the
racing torrent, and the vessel roars through the water with foaming
bows, though the progress made may be but a few yards within the hour,
while if, as frequently occurs, the hawser carries away, she is
whirled three or four miles down stream before the crew can again
bring her to anchor by the bank.

Wrecks are numerous in this seething maelstrom, and a heavy toll in
lives is taken from the brave and hardy fellows whose lot is cast by
these waters of strife.

It was on this trip that I saw a Chinaman fishing with the help of an
otter.

The animal had a long cord fastened round its neck like a ferret, and
was attached by it to the bows of a sampan, which was rowed by a
woman, while the fisherman, standing on the fore part, gathered in his
hands a net, circular in shape and having a hole in the centre large
enough to admit the otter.

On arriving