Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/40

greens found in these regions, and speaking of insect life in the upper reaches of the great river, tells of "gorgeous butterflies, fireflies the most brilliant I have ever seen, small birds innumerable (notwithstanding the numerous kites and eagles), the commonest of which are the golden oriole, the bluejay, and the ubiquitous swallow. Two kinds of little rocklets with red tails, one of them with a white top-knot, hop about the rocks by the water's edge. Back in the mountains are the golden, silvern, and Reeves' pheasants. . . Thrushes and minas are also common, and the cormorant, which, as well as the tame otter, is everywhere employed in fishing." These remarks apply to the upper Yangtse; that is to say, the two thousand miles of the river above Ichang. Through the last thousand miles of its course the stream runs over beds of soft alluvium, its current comparatively slow except in the season of summer flood, its limits marked by huge embankments, its bed often ten and fifteen feet above the level of the surrounding country, and its scenery uninteresting. Nothing could illustrate more vividly the defective means of communication in China than the fact that the Yangtse constitutes the only highroad from the east to the great province of Szchuan with an area of 167,000 square miles and a population of nearly eighty million souls. For the Yangtse from Ichang to Chungking is a succession of rapids and rocky gorges. No less than a thousand of such obstructions, all