The excitement of passing the rapids is intense. It is a pleasurable sensation when you watch from the shore some one else passing through them; it is more exciting but less pleasurable to be on the boat itself at that moment. The excitement is largely a question of the size of the boat, whence the wisdom of taking a small boat even if it is less comfortable. To watch an eighty-ton junk being hauled through a narrow passage of foaming water is intensely thrilling. It is a matter of great difficulty owing to the rocky nature both of the channel and the shore. The Yangtsze rises and falls some hundreds of feet in the year, and at low water the banks are a mass of rough rocks which remind one more of the sea than of a river. The men who tow are called trackers, and they have to climb over these rocks tugging and straining at the rope while a certain number of them, stripped to nudity, try to keep the rope clear of the rocks which constantly entangle it both on shore and in the water. It is splendid to {84} watch these men as they bound from rock to rock to disengage the rope from some projecting point, or as, leaping into the stream, they swim across to isolated rocks and extricate it from all sorts of impossible situations. Meanwhile the junk creeps up inch by inch, at times standing almost still while the water surges past her and makes a wave at her bow which would not misbecome a torpedo-destroyer in full steam. Woe betide the junk if the rope should foul and break in spite of the efforts of these men, for then she would be at the mercy of the current, and if it should so happen that there was no wind, the mariners on board have no command over her, and she must drift as chance will guide her till quieter water is reached. Of course if there is a wind they can haul up their sail, and then, though they will descend backwards down the stream, they will do it with dignity and safety. We passed a junk doing this. Her rope had apparently broken, her huge sails were set to a stiff breeze; as you watched her by the water she seemed to be sailing at a good rate forwards; as you watched her by the land she was travelling a good steady pace down stream. If she cannot hoist her sail because the wind is unfavourable, then she will rush back, inadequately guided by three huge strange-looking oars. The one at the bow, worked by six men, can twist her round like a teetotum, so that as she dashes down stream, the captain can select which part of her shall bump against the submerged rocks, which after all is but a poor {85} privilege, when you remember that eighty tons of woodwork banged against massive granite rock must be resolved into its constituent boards, whatever part of it strikes the rock first. The two other oars are even less helpful. With eight men at each, they can propel the boat at the rate of about three miles an hour; but what use is that when the stream is bearing the junk to destruction at twenty miles an hour.