You need to use your imagination when viewing this picture. Before the flooding, the pathway carved into the gorge wall was many meters above the water and much more dangerous than it appears here. Soon it will vanish forever.
It was made for the trackers. In the days before steam, all up-river traffic had to be towed through the Gorges by hand. Gangs of workers were enlisted for the task – as many as three hundred labored to tow large junks. It was brutal work. Each individual was tied to the main tow-rope and if he lost his footing on the rocky path his fellows to either side would simply cut him loose to fall to his death to prevent his pulling the whole gang down off the track with him.
The overlay is a picture of bronze statues honoring the trackers in the Three Gorges Dam museum in Chongqing.
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