The Yellow River Exploration

To my splendid and bright Princess Celestia, in the 603rd YR, my 7,239th letter

Apparently we have caused quite the sensation. Our night time assault of the Xiolangdi cataracts is becoming the stuff of legend. A floating ship sails among the stars, and worse; the river serpent pulls the heavens with his strength. The Wing sisters, Gail & Gentle, are being called the twin goddesses of fortune and fate, while Brush Broom is some type of heavenly priestess. The locals are now reluctant to barter with us, preferring to make offerings rather than trade. Sea Salt put a stop to this, but now must do most of the bartering himself.

Our next obstacle is the Sanmen waterfall and our progress towards it challenges my previous intent to follow the Yellow and instead journey up the Wei River past Xi’an. Still to minimize local disturbances, charting the Ordos Loop will avoid more unfortunate legends.

Upon arriving below the Sanmen, we are met by a delegation from Xi’an. I suspect that a very observant unicorn among them has noticed that I am more than a normal pony. Yet, they remained discreet and gracious, even to offer to journey with us, but we can decline as our ship is crowded. They confirm that after the Sanmen the Yellow river goes northward into wilderness toward the land of the Shaggy Ponies.

The unicorn from Xi’an, with a name I cannot even guess to pronounce or write, is also interested in the guishi stone. He recounts the legend that the stone also rises and falls as the river does. This confirms my clues and my need to verify previous investigations. We have time to spare and Brush Broom’s paintings are well received by the delegation. They regret that we have decided to follow the Yellow instead of the Wei River.

We scheme to put the ship as close to the Sanmen falls before employing our lift bags. We spend a lot of time explaining this to the delegation about what and how we are doing this and that to set up additional rig & tackle for the transfer. It is late afternoon before we are ready, so we decide to wait until tomorrow’s sunrise. The Xi’an commission was a bit surprised at this, perhaps thinking that our magic or device needed the night. We allowed them this confusion as I do have a secret to keep about the air bags operation.

In the morning the Xi’an group served us a wonderful breakfast of local vegetables. They did not seem to be in any more of a rush to experience our attempt at the waterfall as we were pretending not to be. We inflated the air bags and the ship rose above the falls. There the Wing sisters and I pulled/pushed the ship to the upper level of the river. Sea Salt had the sails fully employed even before our lift bags were deflated. We all had concerns that the current of the river would sweep the ship over the falls before we could distance ourselves from it.

The Xi’an delegation complimented us on our success. That unicorn was appreciative, but I suspect that he is suspicious that we used magic to inflate our air bags, and as you and I know that the irregular operation does indeed use magic. My apologies for this lack of discretion, he must be perplexed as to who among us non unicorns can do magic or what magical item we might possess.

With all my generosity, kindness, loyalty, trustworthiness, and humor, Sum-po-neigh Knot Yew.