Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1908-08-28
TRIP TO THE Orient
Clarence e. Edwords Touring the
Eastern Countries.
he IS OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.

1
INTERESTINGLY WRITTEN IN WEEK
LY LETTERS, WHICH WILL APP
PEAR IN THE RECORDER.
Soochow, China, March 2S-This
morning / woke up and looked out
of the narrow window of my house
boat; upon the crumbling walls OF
what is probably the Oldest and
most historic city in all China. 1t
might be well, however, before |
tell about this interesting city, to
| tell how it comes that / am on a
house boat away up the Yangtse
river. The house boat is quite an
institution in China 1t is nothing
like the shanty boats on American
rivers, but is built for comfort OF
travellers, and is navigated at the
end of a rope drawn by a power
launch. Foreigners in China have
house-boating down to a fine point,
and naturally so, for the country is
a network of canals and there is no
railroad communication between
4 mi
points in the interior. The better
class of Chinese are also great users
of the house boat; and with them
| it is no new institution for they
had them before the dawn of the
Christian era. The house boat of
the weather Chinese mandarlns
are most elaborate affairs, so far as
decorations are concerned.
Foreigners have improved the
house boats until they are comfort
able homes, and one can hire them
flor small sum. In our party
there are FIVE of us, and we have a
house boat, with six boatmen, two
cooks and two boys to wait on the
table. The total cost of this, with
these men and provisions to run
us is but five dollars, gold, a day.
Ordinarily the house boat moves
along at snail pace, pulled by men
on the bank of the canal by means
of ropes, but we decided to take a
trip to Soochow and found several
other house boats going at the
same time, so we dubbed together
and employed the services OF a ia
panese who owns steam launch,
and we travelled en-train up the
canal. In the four other boats
were lot of young foreigners Eng
lish and American, going to the
paddy fields to hunt, and one boat
carried his missionary and wife, re-
turning to their work after vaca-
ton in Japan.
This picturesqueness of the scene
nv seemed uncanny and unreal. 1t
was bright moonlight night as we
came up the Yangtse river, and
from every house boat came sounds
of music and merry voices. We
left Shanghai in the afternoon and
when we awoke this morning we
were at Soochow, the city that has
been the center of much of Chinese
history. Here the Taipings made
their last stand in our own day.
here "Chinese Gordon broke the
power of the Chinese forever, in
the bloodiest battle in all this
bloody land; it was here that Prince
Ii Hung Chang achieved favor at
the hands of his royal master by
treacherously beheading four rebel
kings, who, under his promise of
mercy, had surrendered.
They are very old, these walls,
so old that not even legend tells
when they were built. They were
old when Solomon built the temple
at Jerusalem. So we'll have they
stood the attack of time that they
are strong to-day, and at their base
the children of Christian misslona-
ries play, while the track of the
Shanghai-Nankin railway is but a
stones throw from their base. 1t
| is claimed that within these walls
eight hun dred thousand of the in
habi ants of Soochow fell victims
of fire and sword during the Taip-
ing rebellion, but the old city rap
idly recovered her loss and to-day
lis one of the greatest marts in all