A Trip up the Yang-Tse-Kiang

By the last mail, I wrote that I was in Shanghai for my health. Since then, I have been up the Yang-tse-Kiang to Hankow, a distance up and back of 1,200 miles, first-class passage $8. This included board for a whole week, and it may startle you to hear that we had genuine strawberries (the first I have seen during seven years' residence in China), which cost the steward five cash each (half a cent), and shad at a cost of $2 per pair.

The missionaries at Hankow inform me that for months they are compelled to use canoes for travel on their streets. It was the busiest season (May) when I reached Hankow, which until recently was the most interior treaty port of the Empire... There is a great rush to get the first new tea into the English market. The fleetest steamers are chartered at fabulous prices: $32 per ton is paid for transportation, and $1,600 for river pilots, on the round trip from Shanghai to Hankow and return.

I was hospitably received, not alone by the missionaries, but by many outside the mission circles, who as a rule do not show much kindness to us. I saw much of the mission work, and found that it was not given exclusively to the natives, but extended to the sailors in the various ports. Ancestral worship, which is the religion of China, is one of the chief obstacles to the reception of Christianity. A pigeon-English-speaking Chinaman to whom a zealous sister had given a book said, in answer to her question, "How did you like it?" "That book talkee fool pigeon. I no can leave father; no can leave mother." He meant he could not cease from worshiping them.