[
    {
        "id": 210340,
        "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-1984",
        "page_number": 311,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "290\n\nRODERICK O'BRIEN S.J.\n\nhad only to retire to the Consulate where a rare treat awaited me in going over his collection.\n\nAlthough at this stage in his fifties, and in weak health (he died a few years later in 1889), Woods apparently planned a substantial scientific voyage up the Yangtze (Changjiang) River, but was unable to achieve this aim.\n\nApril 1885: Passing Through\n\nWoods then joined HMS Flying Fish on a voyage to the Philippine Islands. On 20 March 1885, we find him writing from Manila to his brother, Terry. But the exigencies of war in the region meant that the Flying Fish had to return to Hong Kong, and so also Woods.\n\nThe precise date of his return to Hong Kong is not known. In any event, Woods was soon gone again, this time to Japan. He left Hong Kong on 11 April 1885.\n\nJuly 1885: Pokfulam\n\nThe visit to Japan was planned to be only a short one, and Woods intended to return on the same steamer. But he was taken sick, and it was over a month before he could leave Japan. On 21 June, he was able to leave, and returned to Hong Kong about four weeks later,\n\nThis time, in a letter to his brother Terry dated 7 July 1885, he tells us that he was staying at Pokfulam, at the home of the managing partner in the firm of Douglas Lapraik & Company. Apparently he had not recovered in health, and the Governor arranged for him to spend his stay in the more salubrious climate of Pokfulam. Nevertheless, he was sufficiently attentive that in a later publication on the geography and geology of Hong Kong he was able to make specific mention of formations near the reservoir.\n\nPresumably recovered, he left Hong Kong to complete his work in the Malaysian area, arriving in Singapore once again, and undertaking an excursion to Pahang on the east coast of the peninsula.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215594,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 371,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "321\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA TALE OF SOUR GRAPES: MESSRS. LITTLE AND MESNY AND\n\nTHE FIRST STEAMSHIP THROUGH THE YANGZI GORGES\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nIn 1898 Archibald Little was the first man to take a steam-vessel up through the dangerous Yangzi Gorges amidst great acclaim. This was a red-rag to William Mesny who, in 1905 in his Shanghai periodical Mesny's Chinese Miscellany, furiously wrote that had he been listened to in 1875, a steamboat could have completed the journey up the Gorges within a year or so of that date.\n\nThe 3,200-mile long river, referred to by westerners as the Yangzi is known to the Chinese as Changjiang, Long River, or Da Jiang, the Great River. The foreigner name, Yangzi, is a misnomer from the Chinese reference to the first stretch from the Yellow Sea, approximately a day or so sail up from Shanghai to Yangzhou, hence Yang.\n\nThe River can be divided into four sections. The first stretch from the sea to Wuhan [Hankou and Wuchang], some 600 miles upstream, is navigable for blue water vessels during the summer and small draught steamers at all times of the year. It may come as a surprise to read of the emergency run in September of 1931 of the British aircraft carrier, H.M.S. Hermes to Hankou during major floods. The Chairman of the Nationalist Flood Relief Commission, T.V. Soong, requested the British C-in-C for assistance using RAF reconnaissance aircraft from H.M.S. Hermes to assist the Chinese in flood survey patrol work.\n\nThe second stretch upstream from Wuhan to Yichang is always navigable to small draught vessels and is a very boring run passing, as it does, through a flat plain with many dykes.\n\nThe third stretch from Yichang to Chongqing is fast flowing downstream through the narrow and dangerous succession of Gorges, so popular with foreign tourists. The great variations in water level",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]