National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

the President of the Republic, was expecting me at an audience at 10 o'clock the same day. I had thus been requested to wait upon China's two highest leaders

on the same day and at the same time, the one in Nanking and the other in Han-

kow. I therefore replied to the official who had brought the summons to the President, that I was unable to come as I was already expected at the same hour by

the Marshal. To this the official answered that even the Marshal must bow to the President of the Republic, and that I must cancel my appointment with the Marshal.

The audience with old LIN SEN was concerned mostly with the motor-roads to Central Asia, that he found very reasonable. The whole interview took half an

hour. I was on tenterhooks. When I finally got out of the palace I heard that

the traffic plane had just left. At 1.45 a gentleman from the Minister of Communications came to say that orders had arrived from the Marshal to place a plane

at my disposal. The car stood ready, and the obliging gentleman took YEW and myself to the air-port on the Yang-tze. At 2.14, with Captain C. J. SELLER as pilot, the plane lifted in an elegant curve over the great turbid river.

I had during the past year made myself thoroughly familiar with several of the most celebrated rivers in Asia, and in the summer I had actually travelled down

the lowest reaches of the Tarim; but I had never seen such a living and instruct-

ive picture of the structure and life of a river as on this flight. The panorama that spread out under us was both grandiose and imposing, and changed its con-

figuration and appearance every moment. At first we had the river quite near on the left, and had a splendid view of its bends, cut-off arms, oblong islands, marginal lakes and canals, and its junks with hoisted sails. Some of the sheets of water were so extensive that they looked like floods. Only in some places was the Yang-tze collected in one channel.

After scarcely two hours the country became broken, and we flew low over the tops of the hills. The river disappeared from sight and our course took us over

a regular jumble of hills and vales. Finally we returned to the river. Its surface was now strewn with junks and vessels of varying size and shape. The atmosphere was rather hazy, and over the hills hovered light white clouds. The junks became increasingly numerous. One noticed that we were approaching a big city, to which all kinds of products were being taken from the country on these wonderfully picturesque Yang-tze boats.

And now Captain SELLER made a slowly sinking curve; without feeling so much as a jolt we landed at The Bund in Hankow after two and three quarters of an hour's flight.

Here we were met by one of the Marshal's adjutants, who had been kept informed of the course of our flight at intervals by wireless. He told me that the audience was to take place the following morning at io o'clock. In Hotel Terminus we met several newspapermen, among them the Swiss, WALTER BOSSHARD,

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