Few places on earth match the splendor of the Yangzi River's Three Gorges. This 150-mile stretch of shoals and chasms has inspired millennia of poets, princes and paupers.

As a young man, Cowles was spellbound by tales of danger and daring from those who had ventured into the famed "Dragon's Mouth." In 1946, just prior to the Communist takeover, Cowles, along with a Chinese professor and an Army pilot-engineer, set out to experience the gorges firsthand. For 19 days they immersed themselves in the life of the river, along side 65 crewmen aboard a 95-foot junk.

Along the way they encountered bandits, sages, revolutionaries and death, and, ultimately, a sense of meaningfulness that has accompanied them during the ensuing decades. The grandeur and depth are made all the more poignant when juxtaposed against his return in the 1980s, this time aboard a luxury liner. Gone are lice-ridden bedrolls and horrific near-misses with whirlpools, but gone, too is a head-on collision with the sublime and unforgiving forces of nature that first attracted Cowles.

With the completion, in 2009, of a mega dam the gorges will be subjugated completely and irrevocably lost.