certain other more obvious considerations, | have fairly baulked the skill of our most that we are the latest birth of time. able engineers. M. S. DIMsdale. From The Leisure Hour. BY C. F. GORDON CUMMING. To the majority of our readers the term "river" either suggests a glassy stream flowing calmly on through green meadows or through some great city, or else it recalls more picturesque waters rushing down rocky ravines from their cradle in the mountains; but in either case, the vision thus suggested is that of a reliable river, not given to any very serious variation either in its bulk or in its course. Having once made for itself a channel, the orderly British river rarely departs from it to any serious extent, or if in very flat countries it may in wet seasons overflow its banks, it invariably ere long returns to its accustomed boundaries. Hence most of our great Indian rivers are bordered with a wide expanse of arid sand, caused by the vagaries of the evershifting stream, the main channel of one year being frequently a mile to right or left of that of the previous year. The inconvenience of this peculiarity to the inhabitants may well be imagined, as the wayward rivers constantly select the most fertile fields for their new channel, leaving as a substitute a tract of worthless sand or swamp, productive only of reeds and miasma, fever and ague. Or it may be that the central field of some compact farm is suddenly transformed into an island, very inconvenient of access. At other times, the waters, rushing headlong in tumultuous flood, overspread the plain, forming vast lakes, overwhelming villages, drowning sheep and cattle, destroying the whole harvest, and leaving thousands of miserable peasants utterly ruined and starving, seeking refuge in tree-tops or on hastily constructed rafts, Very different is the conduct of many with such domestic animals as they have of the huge rivers of Asia, specially those been able to rescue. A terrible example of India and China, which travel perhaps of a flood of this kind occurred in 1866, in two or three thousand miles from their the province of Orissa, in southern India, source in some remote mountain range when many rivers rushing down from the ere they finally reach the sea. The greater mountains in wild torrents, simultaneously part of their course lies across vast dead burst their banks, and the surging waters level plains, so totally devoid of rocky overwhelmed a tract of two hundred and boundaries that there is really nothing to seventy-five square miles, with four hunprevent the waters from meandering in dred and twelve thousand of the inhabany direction, obedient to any sudden im-itants, and those who escaped with their pulse. Such wayward wanderings are lives were left homeless and ruined. generally due to the enormous accumulation of sediment brought down from the mountains by the thousand torrents born of the melting snows, all combining to form the one great stream. Here and there, without apparent cause, the waters deposit this silt, thus forming great sandbanks and shoals, which, in the course of perhaps only a few weeks, suffice to ob struct the free flow of the river, which accordingly glides off aimlessly to right or left, eventually forming a new channel, probably miles away from the bed which it has hitherto filled. A noteworthy instance of an unreliable Indian river is the Brahmapootra, which for the first thirty years of the present century entered the sea fully two hundred miles eastward of where it now unites its waters with those of the Ganges. From the point where this divergence began, the condition of the whole country was revolutionized, the great cities which had grown up on its banks being now left dry and desert, and consequently ruined, while the poorest villages which chanced to be near its new course became wealthy and prosperous, for in tropical lands the facilThough sudden rainfalls have their partities for irrigation are in themselves a in producing floods, the annual melting of the snow on the great mountain ranges is accountable for most of the damage done by glacier-cradled streams. For instance, the Ganges at midsummer is a muddy cataract of twenty times the volume it has in winter, and one of its tributaries, the Damoodah, is subject to such vagaries as mine of wealth, and in this case the great river also proved the waterway which brought trade to their very doors. But such versatile behavior as that of the Brahmapootra is as nothing compared with the freaks of China's most fickle river, the great Hoang-Ho (which is, being interpreted, the Yellow River), and which is forever indulging in most mischievous vagaries, and keeping every one within its reach, if not in hot water, most assuredly in equally annoying misplaced cold water. From the earliest historic days the chronicles of the empire record the damage done by this sacred stream, the propitiatory offerings made to the river-god by the emperor and his people, and the enormous sums of money expended on constructing or repairing gigantic embankments in order to strengthen the bed of the river, and induce it to remain within whichever of its self-chosen channels it happened to be occupying. The records of the empire prove that "China's sorrow" (as this Bohemian water-flood is poetically called) has changed its course nine times within the last twenty-five hundred years. But the legends of prehistoric days tell of far greater changes; namely, of a vast inland sea which covered the whole province of Honan, until the emperor Yii, who now receives divine honors as the mightiest of engineers, devised means for the construction of such stupendous embankments, that the waters of the Hoang-Ho were therein captured and confined at the remote point where they pour down from the high table-lands of Mongolia across which they flow from their far-away cradle in the mountains of Thibet. Thus he drained the vast lake, and ob tained a new province, so amazingly fertile that it has ever since been known as the "garden of China." The whole of that enormous area of upwards of sixty-five thousand square miles, is a level plain of the richest alluvial soil, known as loess. This is a yellow earth, very light and friable, and, supposing the rainfall to be sufficient, its fertility is inexhaustible. It forms an upper bed of from one hundred to three hundred feet in depth. But this yellow soil has all been deposited in past ages by the river, which derives its own name from the very large quantity of the same soil with which its waters are always charged, and which it continues to deposit in such quantities as to be forever raising its own bed higher and higher above the level of the surrounding plain. Consequently it is only by ceaselessly raising the embankments to a corresponding degree, and strengthening them, that the river is artificially kept within bounds. These cyclopean banks of mud, or of basketwork full of small boulders, and faced with brick and stone, extend for hundreds of miles, and at some points they are so high that to reach the summit one has to ascend sixty or seventy granite steps, when one stands on the brink of a swift river, averaging half a mile in width, and looking down on the boundless level plain. Such banks have to be built so as to allow for the river's natural rise of fully twenty feet. It is evident that only by ceaseless vigilance can these enormous earthworks be kept in thorough repair, and government officials are enjoined to bestow the utmost attention to this subject. For the last few hundred miles of the river's course, as it nears the sea (increasing the danger by the deposit of more and more yellow earth), the banks are divided into short sections, each of which has its allotted guard. Experienced officers of the highest standing superintend the whole. Those who prove themselves zealous in times of danger are rewarded with titles and decorated with peacocks' feathers, but woe betide the luckless officials in whose district an inundation occurs; they are pretty certain to be degraded from their high estate and punished ignominiously. Needful repairs are executed in winter and spring, when the waters are at the lowest, and enormous sums are thus expended even in ordinary years. The Yellow River is by no means the only one which requires this ceaseless care. In a minor degree it is necessary for rivers in all parts of the empire. Repairs of embankments are occasionally undertaken by private individuals as an act of merit, their good deeds generally calling forth some mark of imperial favor such as strikes our Western minds as somewhat incongruous. Thus a rich citizen of Canton, having expended upwards of a hundred thousand taels (a coin somewhat more valuable than a dollar) in strengthening a mud embankment of the Pearl River by facing it with stones, was rewarded by the emperor Ka-hing with high literary rank. Another man, obedient to the dying wishes of his grandfather, recently expended twelve hundred taels on an embankment and rampart in the Ssu-hui district. On its completion the donor was allowed to build an enor mous ornamental archway of finely carved stone, to the joint memory of his grandfather and grandmother. To explain this very singular reward, I must explain that honorific arches of this class are dotted about at random over the country in various parts of China, but the permission to erect them has in every case been specially granted by the emperor as a mark of imperial favor. In summer and autumn the rivers come down in greatly increased volume, and there is constant danger of sudden freshets, which severely test the condition of the artificial banks. Then the guardians of the embankment are required to be on the watch day and night, with an abundant store of materials ready to strengthen any point where the waters appear to be gaining undue power. are still marked by wide tracts of dry dust and arid sand. This, however, is not invariable, for just as a great volcano sometimes ejects smooth lava which quickly disintegrates, and only needs the magic of irrigation to transform it into most fertile soil, while at other times it pours forth torrents of fluid basalt and other black rock, which ruin the land forevermore, so does this great But what can human vigilance avail river sometimes deposit such layers of against the might of such a stream as the mountain sand and gravel as effectually Great Yellow River, when, in autumn, it destroy the soil; while at other times it pours down from the mountains with about enriches the country with a fresh coating ten times its winter volume, flowing rapidly of fertile yellow earth, so that Chinese for a distance of about two thousand miles, peasants eagerly take possession of its waters saturated with sand and earth, patches of the deserted river-bed, and which it deposits all along its course, rais-plead vehemently against any suggestion ing its bed and forming shallows, till at of bringing back the waters to drive them length the waters either overflow their from their newly acquired land. artificial channel, or else (sometimes aided by weeks of soddening rain) some portion of the bank gives way? Then indeed "the mighty floods are out," and the officials know that their degradation is certain. Of course the immediate result is a destructive inundation, extending far and wide, transforming whole countries into gigantic lakes, ten or twelve feet in depth, drowning all living creatures, and covering the land with a deposit which, for one season at least, is fatal to all agriculture, and often leaves great tracts transformed into feverish swamps. The luckless people, starving and ruined, are stricken down wholesale with a very severe form of fever and ague, which probably adheres to them for the rest of their days, leaving them wholly unfit for work. But the allurements of this fertile land are irresistible to a race so essentially agricultural as the Chinese - a soil which, when planted with rice, yields a hundred and sixty-fold, and in some places gives two crops a year; and where all manner of fruit-trees grow luxuriantly, especially mulberry groves, for the support of the silkworms. So a fresh legion of workers is ready to swarm in so soon as the waters subside to something like their average proportions, and as the river is certain to create for itself a totally new channel, it is necessary to enclose this within great embankments, which, like those now abandoned by the stream, must be continually built higher and higher, as the deposit of silt raises the river-bed. Nine distinct channels are known to have been thus occupied by this fickle stream at various periods within the last twenty-five hundred years, channels which in some districts For the five centuries prior to 1852 the Hoang-Ho continued wonderfully constant to the course it had last selected, flowing through the province of Ki'ang-Su, and pouring its waters into those of the Yellow Sea, about one hundred and fifty miles to the north of the great Yang-tse River and Shanghai. The present generation had wellnigh forgotten the erratic tendencies of these unstable waters, when suddenly, in the year 1852, they burst the northern bank near the city of Kaifung, about two hundred and fifty miles inland, flooding the land, and spreading ruin and desolation as they swept onward in a north-easterly direction, their course being guided by the rocky range which borders the huge promontory dividing the Yellow Sea from the Gulf of Pe-chi-li. Thus the river was compelled to flow northward till it reached the latter sea, at a distance of fully five hundred miles from its old mouth, leaving its former bed a level plain of dust, to the despair of all gardeners, farmers, and traders. Strange to say, so little did foreigners even then know of anything that occurred beyond the limits of the treaty ports, that five years elapsed ere the Europeans living in Shanghai had any inkling of the tremendous catastrophe which had occurred scarcely so far from their homes as Edinburgh is from London. Two years later, though it was then known beyond a doubt that the great river had vanished from its accustomed bed, no foreigners knew what had become of it, nor are we even now in possession of any details of that terrible inundation. One thing we do now know (and it illustrates the grievous waste of land occa. sioned by these erratic rivers), namely, cause and effect are very odd. Two years that although the stream was then travers- ago the over-troublesome Yellow River ing the very same part of the country as inundated a large tract of the province of it had done five hundred years previously, Shansi, destroying two important towns, yet it nowhere flowed in exactly the same Kien-Ning-Foo and Yen-Ping-Foo, tochannel, where the strong ready-made em-gether with a wide expanse of tea-plantabankment would have been so helpful. tion. There was terrible loss of life, Like a hermit crab appropriating a shell which included a multitude of the river not its own, the Great Yellow River se- population, whose boat-homes were irrelected for its bed the channel of a much sistibly swept along by the raging floods, smaller stream. Consequently every sum- and wrecked against the arches of bridges mer it has been liable to overflow these and other obstacles. One of the censors boundaries, overspreading the adjacent deemed it his duty to attribute this displains, and the expenditure of labor and aster to the fact that Prince Chun, the money in the endeavor to control these father of the emperor, while on a recent vagrant waters has been enormous. Of journey to Tientsin to inspect the fleet course it was necessary, at whatever cost, and fortresses, had been escorted by the to build up entirely new embankments; chief of the court eunuchs. It appears and notwithstanding all vigilance, the tur- that under a previous dynasty it was cusbulent waters, in their autumnal vigor, tomary to send an eunuch to armies in have from time to time burst these, flood- the field, to act as witness and censor of ing large tracts of country, sweeping away the military operations. For some reason the whole harvest, and drowning the luck- not stated, the censor assumes that this less cultivators. Sacrifices of sheep, pigs, custom was displeasing to the gods, and and incense have been offered to appease that Prince Chun ought not to have been the water-spirits, to whom imperial heralds thus escorted. On this occasion, howhave read letters from the emperor, which ever, the censor seems to have exceeded letters have then been burnt, that thus his prerogative, for he received sharp they might reach the spirit world. reprimand in the form of an imperial edict from the empress, for having presumed under cover of duty to "deliver a lecture to his sovereign." September, suddenly at dead of night, the raging river burst its banks right in the heart of the province of Honan, which, for its fertility, is commonly called the "garden of China." The river being then at its fullest, the embanked portion has been compared to a gigantic reservoir about five hundred miles in length and nearly a mile wide. One of the peculiarities of Chinese worship is the singular scale of rewards and punishments by which the gods are induced to accede to petitions, or rewarded As regards the regular sacrifices to the for compliance. In cases of severe water-spirits, these are offered twice a drought, the images of obdurate deities year, but with how little result was sadly are sometimes dragged out into the scorch-proved last autumn, when, on the 28th ing sun, and there left till they are blis. tered, in order that the unsympathetic spirit may experience some of the discomfort to which his worshippers are exposed. On the other hand, a beneficent deity who comes to the rescue when required, is rewarded by an imperial grant of highsounding titles, which are duly patented and published in the Official Gazette. Again and again the Great Water Dragon Its waters, rushing down at headlon has been thus honored. Only last autumn, in August and September, the military governor of Yeho, in Manchuria, reported two cases of special intervention, when freshets had flooded the river, imperilling the palace, whereupon the governor, accompanied by all the officers and laborers on the river-works, hastened to the temple to offer prayers and sacrifices. The flood abated, and of course the Water Dragon got full credit for this deliverance, so the Board of Ceremonies was commanded to deliberate on the new title to be conferred by the emperor in recognition of his services. Certainly Chinese notions regarding speed, bore with unwonted violence against a corner of the southern embankment, where the river bends, near the town of Chang-Chou, forty miles to the west of Kaifung, which was the scene of the disaster in 1852. The previous fortnight had been unusually wet and stormy; the banks were sodden with the prolonged rain, and a heavy freshet, driven by a high wind, brought the last strain. About a hundred yards of the southern embankment gave way; with frantic, but, of course, unavailing, efforts, the watch men strove to patch the breach, which rapidly widened to twelve hundred yards. Then with awful resistless rush the es the bitter cold of a northern winter, thankful to huddle together in poor straw huts, with scarcely clothes to cover them, and those the gift of pitiful countrymen. caped torrent poured into the valley of the Lu-chia River, filling it to the brim as a thing of small account; and the appall ing deluge, forming a mass of water about twenty feet deep in the centre, and about At first newspaper correspondents thirty miles wide, swept on over the fertile shrank from even mentioning the estiand well-cultivated province of Honan, mated number of the dead, but there is covering about one-sixth of the whole, every reason to believe that the calculanamely, an area of about ten thousand tion by the European who is most in the square miles. In other words, a densely secrets of the government at Peking is peopled plain about half the size of Scot- nowise exaggerated, and that it is proba land, dotted over with about three thou-ble that about seven millions out of the sand large villages and cities, inhabited twenty-five million inhabitants of the by millions of the most industrious people province of Honan have perished, noton the face of the earth, was suddenly withstanding that, by clinging to planks overwhelmed by this awful flood, and and floating furniture, a vast number suctransformed into a raging sea. ceeded in eventually reaching districts beyond reach of the waters. Imagination can scarcely picture a scene so appalling as this. The great peaceful plain, where on the evening of the 28th September several millions of prosperous people lay down to rest in salety and comfort, without one thought of danger, only to be awakened by the crashing of falling walls and houses collapsing on every side, and the deafening roar as the wild flood of raging waters, rushing on through the darkness of night, overwhelmed one city or village after another. When morning broke, in place of a vast expanse of richly cultivated fields, there was only to be seen a boundless waste of surging waters, sportively tossing thousands of corpses of men, women, and their little ones; buffaloes, oxen, and other animals, together with furniture, timber, straw, grain, ard wreckage of every description. The three thousand villages lay buried -some ten, some thirty feet beneath the waters, and of their inhabitants, incalculable multitudes must have found a grave beneath their own roofs. Of one great city, Chuhsien-Chen (one of the principal trading centres of China), we learn that being fortunately on high ground it escaped with the loss of a few suburbs, a description which, as the Times observes, is as though one should say, "London is safe, but Hampstead, Highgate, Croydon, Wandsworth, Wimbledon, and Ealing were destroyed." For two long months the immense volume of the waters of the Great Yellow River have continued to pour down from the mountains on to the inhabited lands, ever enlarging the boundaries of the recreated great inland sea, which has thus once more reclaimed the lands drained by the deified emperor Yii. It is said of these wide waters that none have as yet reached the ocean - unless, indeed, it be true that a branch of the great river has betaken itself to the channel of the Hwei, or Little Yellow River, and thus flows to the sea. A later account, however, states that much water is escaping southward through the Great Canal and the River Yang-tse-kiang. But, strange to say, even with the increased facilities for obtaining informa tion, resulting from the great increase of European residents in China in the last thirty years, news still travels so slowly that a whole month after the disaster, the English papers published in China allude to the subject in most guarded terms as one of which they have no certain knowledge, and six weeks were allowed to elapse ere special correspondents felt justified in reporting anything like a detailed statement of what had occurred. It was not till the Peking Official Gazette announced the grief of the emperor and empressmother, and the very large sums which they contributed for the relief of the sufferers, that Europeans even began to realize the magnitude of the disaster. From another great city, Chou-Chiak'ou, a member of the China Inland Mission writes that of the fifty-six streets in his district of the town only five have This formal gazetting of imperial symescaped; the others, he says, are all de- pathy seems to us rather quaint. The stroyed, and probably as many persons public are officially informed that "the have perished by the falling of houses as serious nature of the calamity has robbed by drowning. He tells of the terrible her Majesty the empress-mother of both desolation of the survivors, so recently sleep and appetite;" and expedition in happy and wealthy-now without bread, the distribution of relief is urged, because having lost absolutely everything; and in" every day that is saved in relieving the |