A coolie on the Cui-kau launch accidentally fell overboard, and although a friend was able to grasp his hand and hold him above the surface, no one offered to help him; the launch continued at full speed, and finally weakening, the poor man loosed his hold and sank.  This is by no means an isolated case.  Some years ago a foreign steamer was burned on the Yangtze River, and the crowds of watching Chinese did little or nothing to rescue the passengers and crew.  Indeed, as fast as they made their way to shore many of them were robbed even of their clothing and some were murdered outright.

Our first day on the Min River was the most luxurious of the entire Expedition, for we were fortunate in obtaining the Standard Oil Company’s launch through the kindness of Mr. Livingston, their agent.  It was large and roomy, and the trip, which would have been worse than disagreeable on the public boat, was most delightful.  The Min is one of the most beautiful rivers of all China with its velvet green mountains rising a thousand feet or more straight up from the water and often terraced to the summits.

Perched on the bow of our boat was a wizened little gentleman with a pigtail wrapped around his head, who said he was a pilot, but as he inquired the channel of everyone who passed and ran us aground a dozen times or more to the tremendous agitation of our captain, we felt that his claim was not entirely justified.

The river life was a fascinating, ever-changing picture.  One moment we would pass a sampan so loaded with branches that it seemed like a small island floating down the stream.  Next a huge junk with bamboo-ribbed sails projecting at impossible angles drifted by, followed by innumerable smaller crafts, the monotonous chant of the boatmen coming faintly over the water to us as they passed.

When evening came we had reached Cui-kau.  The sampans in which we were to spend eight days were drawn up on the beach with twenty or thirty others.  Right above us was the straggling town looking very much like the rear view of tenement houses at home.  Darkness blotted out the filth of our surroundings but could do nothing to lessen the odors that poured down from the village, and we ate our dinner with little relish.

Our beds were spread in the sampans which we shared in common with the four river men who formed the crew.  There was only a mosquito net to screen the end of the boat, but all our surroundings were so strange that this was but a minor detail.  As we lay in our cots we could look up at the stars framed in the half oval of the sampan’s roof and listen to the sounds of the water life grow fainter and fainter as one by one the river men beached their boats for the night.  It seemed only a few minutes later when we were roused by a rush of water, but it was daylight, and the boats had reached the first of the rapids which separated us from Yen-ping, one hundred and twenty miles away.