Having landed our Hankow pilots, failed in getting others for I-Chang, but as we got our sights, there was no further cause for detention. The ill feeling by a few roughs was anything but the prevailing one among the natives, who swarmed alongside to see the ship, bringing vegetables and sweetmeats for sale. Two or three boats full of the fishing cormorants amused us amazingly: they had probably been fishing in the clear waters of the lake. The birds were perched all over the boat, on the gunnels, on the top of the covering, or anywhere they could get a footing. Although each had a small line to one leg, none of them were secured; there were perhaps twenty in each boat. The fish they had caught were of various sorts, and, strange to say, the perch, with its prickly fin, that a pike will refuse to touch, was not the least common among those in the tub; in fact, while the man was holding the fish-tub, one of the cormorants shoved his beak in and seized a large perch. He, in his turn, was seized by the throat and made to disgorge. I noticed that the man cleverly turned the fish round in the throat of the cormorant, so that it came out head foremost. It would have puzzled the cormorant to have got rid of it otherwise, unless the perch had gone clean through him. I was anxious to ascertain how the Chinaman prevented the fish passing into the stomach of the cormorant, and found that it was by a twist of straw tied just tight enough round the lower part of the neck to hold a fish of about 3/4 lb. When we started I daresay the roughs went home rejoicing, thinking they had driven us away. We weighed about an hour before sunset, and turned down the stream to where we had diverged from the Yang-tse, in which we brought up for the night. [Sidenote: Mar. 27.] We weighed at daylight, with Blakiston’s geographical flying survey of the river as our only guide. This, officers had enlarged to a scale of one inch to the mile. We managed between 70 and 80 miles the first day, without accident beyond that of fouling a junk that persisted in placing itself under our bows, turn which way we would. No great damage done: a Chinaman was knocked overboard from the junk, but he managed to take a plank with him. It is so seldom that a Chinaman ever helps a drowning man, that we stopped a few minutes until we saw him picked up. There was but little variety in the scenery. One remarkable object was the skeleton of a large forest tree, noticed also by Blakiston. The only way to account for its standing alone in a country where fuel is scarce, is that it must have been struck by lightning, when it would be considered a thing accursed! If a junk is struck by lightning she is deserted. Porpoises continued to tumble over, and bottles that floated past gave indication that we were not the first Europeans up the Yang-tse. [Sidenote: Sunday, Mar. 28.] As if to made up for our good fortune on the previous day, we frequently touched the bottom. Came to at Shi-show.