The coup d’œil of these three cities is beautiful, their environs being highly cultivated and interspersed with the mansions of the great; but he adds, “If you draw near, you will find on the margin of the river only a shapeless bank worn away with freshets, and in the streets stalls surmounted with palisades, and workshops undermined by the waters or tumbling to pieces from age. The open spots between these ruins are filled with abominations which diffuse around a suffocating odor. No regulations respecting the location of the dwellings, no sidewalks, no place to avoid the crowd which presses upon one, elbowing and disputing the passage, but all get along pell-mell, in the midst of cattle, hogs, and other domestic animals, each protecting himself as he best can from the filth in his way, which the Chinese collect with care for agricultural uses, and carry along in little open buckets through the crowd.” Above Hankow, the towns on the Yangtsz’ lie nearer its banks, as they are not so exposed to the freshets. The largest trading places in this part of Hupeh on the river, are Shasí, opposite Kinchau fu, and Íchang near the borders of Sz’chuen, respectively 293 and 363 miles distance. From the first settlement there is a safe passage by canal across to Shayang, forty miles away on the River Han; the travel thence goes north to Shansí. The other has recently been opened to foreign trade. It is the terminus of navigation for the large vessels used from Shanghai upward, as the rapids commence a few miles beyond, necessitating smaller craft that can be hauled by trackers. These two marts are large centres of trade and travel, and were not made desolate by the Tai-pings, as were all other towns of importance on the lower Yangtsz’. The portion of the Yangtsz’ in this province, between Íchang and the Sz’chuen border, exhibits perhaps some of the most magnificent glimpses of scenery in the world. Breaking through the limestone foundations that dip on either side of the granite core of the rapids, the river first penetrates the Wu shan, Mitan, and Lukan gorges on the one side, then the long defile of Íchang on the other. At various points between and beyond these the stream is broken by more or less formidable rapids. Among these grand ravines the most impressive, though not the longest, is that of Lukan, whose vertical walls rise a thousand feet or more above the narrow river. Nothing can be more striking, observes Blakiston, than suddenly coming upon this huge split in the mountain mass “by which the river escapes as through a funnel.”