Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1896 — The Kickaway Boat. [ARTICLE]

The Kickaway Boat.

u^fkißg-^amoag---JJm —many., glimpses of Chinese people, places, and customs given by Julian, Ralph in a recent article in Harper’s, is perhaps his description of the passing of a Chinese passenger-vessel worked by man-pow-er through the agency of a treadmill. This extraordinary craft went by at night, close enough to afford the American observer an excellent opportunity for observation. “It Came throbbing and drumming up to and beyond us,” he writes, “a great yellow box on a low, broad hull. Huge beams of yellow lamplight shot out of its many square windows upon the murky water beside it. “Through the windows we saw the coolie passengers lying on bed-slielvea. and next beyond them the long-coated gentry in round, button-topped skullcaps, smirking and gambling and lounging abdut. And then came a fair third of the broad boat, open at the sides, lighted by a Smoky lamp, and filled with the ghost-like figures of many men, all walking, walking, walking, add yet standing in one place, as they clambered incessantly upon a treadmill that worked a great naked stern paddle-wheel, toward which they walked, yet which they never reached. "The trunks of the spectral men dripped .with perspiration. The feeble rays of the lamp were caught upon their sweating sides and shoulders, and reflected back. And when,two or three turned their heads to look at our boat, the lij*ht leaped into their eyes, and made them eoals of fire. "There were twelve or fifteen men on the treadmill, though there might have been fifty, or none at all, but In their place a shapeless monster, all heads and legs and shadows, prisoned in a dark cell, and condemned to walk without rest to Soochow and back, and back again forever.” The appearance of this strange boat was, to the American writer and the artist accompanying him, something frightful, and tluqtoil of the tread-mill men a thing to shudder at; but to the Chinese passengers it seems quite natural and simple, as indeed no doubt it is, The coolies who kick these “klckaway boats.” as they are called, over tlieiit folftF'knve’certainly a hard task; but it is a question if it is harder, or as hard, as that of the stokers in the terrible hot depths of an ocean-going steamship, and if they are not, according to the standard of their country, equally well paid.