It was a severe blow to the University, but the University survived it.
My countryman had been five years in China in the customs service, that marvellous organisation which is more impartially open to all the world than any other service in the world.

As an example, I note that among the Commissioners of Customs at the ports of the River Yangtse alone, at the time of my voyage the Commissioner at Shanghai was an Austrian, at Kiukiang a Frenchman, at Hankow an Englishman, at Ichang a Scandinavian, and at Chungking a German.
The Australian had been ten months at Chungking.

His up-river journey occupied thirty-eight days, and was attended with one moving incident.
In the Hsintan rapid the towline parted, and his junk was smashed to pieces by the rocks, and all that he possessed destroyed.

It was in this rapid that my boat narrowly escaped disaster, but there was this difference in our experiences, that at the time of his accident the river was sixty feet higher than on the occasion of mine.
Tang-chia-to, the customs out-station, is ten miles by river from Chungking, but not more than four miles by land.

So I sent the boat on, and in the afternoon walked over to the city.