Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/41

difficult of passage and perilous, are enumerated in the "Yangtse Pilot," so that junks and boats struggling up against the strong current have to be dragged by bands of trackers toiling with bodies bent almost to the ground and making their way over cliff paths such as no ordinary pedestrian could traverse with safety. Immense waste of labor and of time, to say nothing of cost and risk of loss, is entailed in the transport of goods by such a route, yet there is practically no other,^[1] and the Chinese would apparently have remained content to suffer under these crippling conditions for all time had not foreign enterprise placed upon the river in 1899 small steamers specially built which will probably revolutionise the traffic in a few years.

The Pearl River (Chu-kiang), with its three branches, the East, the North, and the West rivers, constitutes the southern unit of the great water system of China. This, generally spoken of as the "West River" (Si-kiang), has its source in the south of Yunnan, whence, after a course of some nine hundred miles in a generally easterly direction, it enters the sea at Canton, after draining an area of about 130,000 square miles. Apart from its association with the celebrated city of Canton, which alone would suffice to make the river famous, the question of getting its waters opened to foreign navigation occupied diplomatic and commercial attention for many years, and was