CHAPTER VII

Summary

WE were in the small but well-built village of Tchung-wahkow, on the banks of the Pehtang hô, as it is named by us, but to which the people here give the lengthy title of Chetau Yoon-leang hô. Ascending the narrow, steep street, which was lined by tastefully-finished houses on each side, we descend again to the little jetty, where the ferry-boat is waiting to convey us across the sluggish yellow river, flowing noiselessly and smoothly on, undisturbed by many junks, and between low clayey embankments here and there, but more often spreading over a large patch of land, on which grows in thick luxuriance the tall lazily-swaying reed (Phragmites communis), so useful in this part of the world for the manufacture of matting and in forming an under-thatch on the roofs of the better classes of houses. As usual, the alarm had been sounded, and a mob of old and young, males and females, hurried out to see us,—the most obstreperous of the masculine gender crushing and crowding around ere we had time to transfer our cart, ponies, and mules, from the ground to the barge.