[ { "id": 204652, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1963", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "NAVIGATION ON THE YANGTSE \n\n119 \n\nThe restriction about navigation beyond Ichang was abolished after the Sino-Japanese War by the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, and three years later the indefatigable Little had the satisfaction of taking his Leechuan from Ichang up to Chungking, the first steamer to navigate the Upper Yangtse. The Leechuan was a twin screw, wooden, steam launch only fifty-five feet long, and too small to carry any cargo. Little acted as his own captain and chief engineer, and the Leechuan had to be pulled up the strongest of the rapids by trackers. Two years later, however, a larger paddle steamer Pioneer, built by Little and a group of associates, made the first commercial passage to Chungking. The Pioneer was built by Denny of Dumbarton, and was 180 feet long, 60 feet beam over the paddle boxes, and had a draft of 6 feet. She carried 150 tons of cargo and many deck passengers, and took seven days between Ichang and Chungking on her first trip. There is a photograph of her in Gleanings from Fifty Years in China by Archibald Little (Philadelphia, 1908), p. 141. Shortly afterwards the Pioneer was commandeered by the British government to bring British subjects down the Yangtse during the Boxer troubles, and she finished her career as H.M.S. Kinshi, the headquarters ship of the Senior British Naval Officer on the Yangtse.\n\nIn that same year of 1900 the British river gunboat Woodlark, which was 145 feet long, by 23 feet beam, but had a draft of only 3 feet, also reached Chungking, and in the following year Woodlark and her sister ship Woodcock reached Sui Fu, 100 miles beyond Chungking. It was in the December of that year that the first of many serious accidents occurred on the Upper Yangtse, when the German steamer Suichsiang went on the rocks at the Tungling Rapids, 36 miles above Ichang, and was a total loss.\n\nThe Yangtse has its source in Tibet, not far from the headwaters of the Yellow, Mekong, Salween, and Irawaddy Rivers. When this became known to Europeans it became the ambition of many travellers to go up the Yangtse as far as possible, and then to cross over the Himalayas into Burma or India. This journey had a fascination for Europeans very similar to that exercised by the Nile and Niger over their fathers and grandfathers. The naval expedition of 1861, which went up the river as far as Yochow, landed three Englishmen there who intended to follow the river to its source in Tibet, and then cross over the Himalayas into India. Captain Blakiston, Lieutenant Saral, and Doctor Barton of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207792, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "LAND AND RIVER ROUTES TO WEST CHINA\n\n165\n\nboats as far as Bhamo, and then partly by land and partly by water into China. Other exports were amber, ivory, precious stones, betel nuts, and edible birds' nests; while in return Burma got raw and wrought silk, velvet, gold leaf, preserves, and chinaware. Similar reports came from other sources. By 1850, the possibility of extending trade from Yunnan into Szechwan was envisaged, and the glowing prospect of an extensive market for British goods in West China became an obsession among many British officials and merchants in Burma and India.\n\nCaptain McLeod's mission of 1836 is the first official British attempt to find an overland route to China. McLeod went from Moulmein, the port in the newly acquired province of Tenasserim, via Kungtang to Kenghang, a Shan state on the border of China. Here he failed to get permission to enter Yunnan, being told that if the British wanted to trade with China they should go to Canton, and that if he still persisted in wanting to enter Yunnan he would require official permission from Peking. McLeod had to admit defeat, and turned back.\n\nAfter this came a succession of other ventures from Assam and Burma, all—for one reason or another—failures. These culminated in the famous and ill-fated Dual Mission of 1874-75, which led to the Margary Affair.* This was a joint attempt to explore West China from the Burmese and Chinese sides. Previous to this the only important attempts to find a route between Burma and China from the eastern side had been Captain Blakiston's in 1861 and T. T. Cooper's in 1868.\n\nThe Royal Navy's expedition of 1861 which went up the Yangtze to establish the first treaty ports on the great river—Chinkiang, Kiukiang, and Hankow—continued 153 miles beyond Hankow to Yochow. Here they transferred Blakiston's party to junks in which they continued for another 1050 miles to Pingshan, nearly 1800 miles from the sea and 400 miles above Chungking. It had been intended to follow the Yangtze to its source in Tibet, and then cross the Himalayas into India. Because of unsettled political conditions at Pingshan and beyond, however, they were forced to turn back; but they had obtained valuable information about the Middle and Upper Yangtze.\n\nSee pp. 169-170 below.\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207793, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "166 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\nIn 1868 T. T. Cooper, a British merchant in Burma, came to Shanghai and attempted to improve on Blakiston's feat. His venture was partly financed by the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce. Cooper went up the Yangtze to Chungking, and then overland to Chengtu, the capital of Szechwan. Here he received permission from the Governor General to travel on through Szechwan and Tibet to India; but he met such determined opposition and hostility from the lamas on the Tibetan border, where he was imprisoned for five weeks, that he was forced to turn back. \n\nIn the following year, Sir Rutherford Alcock, British Minister at Peking, sent Robert Swinhoe of the China Consular Service to investigate trade prospects on the Upper Yangtze. Vice-Admiral Keppel, R.N. was making a survey of the river, and Swinhoe's party, which included Alexander Michie and Robert Francis of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and two naval surveyors, travelled to Ichang on H.M.S. Opussum. This was the first time a steamship had reached Ichang, and the Chinese pilot refused to go any further. A junk was hired for the passage through the Gorges to Chungking, and soundings and surveys taken en route. The surveyors, however, gave an unfavourable report on the feasibility of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze. They particularly commented on the force of the current, lack of suitable anchorages, intricacy of navigation because of the changeable channel, and so on. They also thought descent would be even more difficult than ascent. The chief engineer of Opossum described a sample of coal obtained half way between Ichang and Chungking as resembling good anthracite in appearance, but requiring large furnaces and a long time for combustion. \n\nThis was the most thorough navigational survey of the Upper Yangtze, and many of the factors militating against steam navigation between Ichang and Chungking were investigated and made known. The bed of the river falls 470 feet in the 360 miles between the two places, and this fall of one and a third feet per mile is the cause of the strong currents and rapids in this section of the river. The most difficult stretch is the first half of the Upper River between Ichang and Wanhsien, where the most difficult rapids and gorges are encountered. The Ichang Gorge begins five miles above Ichang, and then come the Ox Liver and Horse's Lung Gorges, and the Hsintan Rapid immediately after the latter. The most spectacular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207805, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1976", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "178\n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nParliamentary Papers — Reports from the British Consuls at the Treaty Ports of China (various dates)\n\nUnpublished Theses for Degree of Master of Arts at London University\n\na) British Interests in Trans-Burma Trade Route to China 1826-76 by MA THAUNG 1956\n\nb) Anglo-Chinese Relations in the Provinces of the West River and the Yangtze River Basin between 1889-1900 by L. R. MARCHANT, 1965\n\nFive Months on the Yangtze T. W. BLAKISTON\n\nThe Royal Navy and the Sino-Japanese Incident M. BRYCE\n\nChina in Turmoil G. H. GOMPERTZ\n\nThe Irrawaddy Flotilla Company M. J. GRUBB and G. L. D. DUCKWORTH\n\nGleanings from Fifty Years in China A. LITTLE\n\nThe Yangtze Gorges A. LITTLE\n\nRiver Road to China\n\nGlimpses of the Yangtze Gorges\n\nTo the Snows of Tibet through China\n\nYangtze Reminiscences\n\nThe Making of Modern Burma D. WOODMAN\n\nSpecial Mission up the Yangtze Kiang R. SWINHOE\n\nM. OSBORNE\n\nC. PLANT\n\nA. E. PRATT\n\nG. R. TORRIBLE", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212753, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "47\n\n18\n\non the depth and interest of their writings. Some, like Archibald Colquhoun1 went into great detail describing the wealth of minerals, the scope for modernisation in communications and the economy, all subjects which Mesny too, at the same period if not earlier, had written about at length. Others like Mrs Scidmore2 list 'intrepid travellers to Szechuan3 and the far west,' with names like Richtofen, Pumpelly, Von Kreitner, Hosie, Baber, Blaikiston, Little, Gill, Hart, Parker, and Pratt, Mrs Little and Mrs Bishop, and Dr Morrison, but not one of these authors referred to Mesny whose travels and experiences outweigh most if not all of them. Was it because he was considered to have gone native or been more Chinese than ‘one of us\"? We shall never know but each time yet another book was published it must have been galling for Mesny to find only very rarely he had earned a mention. After his trip with Gill to Tibet and India in 1877 he was scarcely referred to in books on China; this together with his constant and repeated reference to his contacts with and closeness to Chinese friends and acquaintances, mostly in high places, suggests that he was ostracised or perhaps no more than ignored by the western social community in Chinese ports and in Shanghai in particular.\n\nDuring his later years when fortune seemed to elude him, when there was no caste lower than the impoverished European or American, a number of themes and points of view in Mesny's writings place him fairly firmly into a class and category of his time. A plague of self-importance swept late-Victorian Britain and spread through its colonies and dependencies. Mesny suffered a massive dose and never, as far as his Miscellany record, appears to have had his balloon pricked. He must have been seen by foreigners in Shanghai and, in particular by his fellow 'Old China Hands', during the latter years of the nineteenth century and the first decade of this as a vulgar, low-born upstart, too fond of his own ideas, a self-centred braggart and an opinionated man, but let it be stressed that he would not be alone in this category in Shanghai or for that matter in all the other major western communities in the Orient. His own notes reflect the disdain with which he was regarded by people like Sir Thomas Wade and Sir Robert Hart. His name dropping in many of his writings, mostly in his personal relationships with Chinese viceroys, provincial governors and commanders in chief, suggests that he probably also dropped names to the same extent in everyday conversation. However, he knew the importance of patronage, especially in China, as one can see from his obituary of Tso, and his description of the momentary meeting with a Manchu hereditary prince.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213385, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 207, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "195\n\nBirch, John Grant, Travels in North and Central China, London Hearst and Blackett, 1902\n\nBishop, Isabella Lucy, The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither, London J Murray, 1883\n\nThe Yangtze Valley and Beyond, New York Putnam, 1900\n\nBlackburn Chamber of Commerce, Report of the Mission to China of the Blackburn Chamber of Commerce, 1896-7, Blackburn North East Lancashire Press, 1898\n\nBlakiston, Thomas Wight 1832-1891, Five Months on the Yang-Tze and Notices of Present Rebellions in China, London J Murray, 1862\n\nBland, John Otway Percy, Houseboat Days in China, London Heinemann, 1919\n\nBoardman, Eugene, Christian Influence Upon the Ideology of the Taiping Rebellion, 1851-1864, Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 1952\n\nBohr, Paul Richard, Famine in China and the Missionary Timothy Richard as Relief Administrator and Advocate of National Reform, 1876-1884, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1972\n\nBoone, Murel, The Seed of the Church in China, Edinburgh St Andrews Press, 1973\n\nBraam Houckgeest, Andreas Everard van, An Authentic Account of the Embassy of the Dutch East India Company to the Court of the Emperor of China in the Years 1794 and 1795 (Subsequent to that of the Earl of Macartney) from the journals of..., London printed by R Phillips, 1798\n\nBradford, Ruth, \"Maskee?\" The Journal and Letters of Ruth Bradford 1861-1872, Hartford The Prospect Press, 1938\n\nBredon, Juliet, Sir Robert Hart: The Romance of a Great Career, London Hutchinson, 1909 (New York Dutton, 1909)\n\n—, Peking, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh, 1931 (Hong Kong reprint Oxford University Press)\n\nBruce, Clarence D., In the Footsteps of Marco Polo, Edinburgh Blackwood, 1907\n\nBryson, Mary Isabella, The Land of the Pigtail, London The Sunday School Union, 1905\n\nBurland, Cottie Arthur, The Travels of Marco Polo (with photographs by Werner Forman), London Joseph, 1971\n\nCable, Mildred, Through Jade Gate and Central Asia, with an introduction by Rev John Stuart Houghton, London Constable, 1927", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 } ]