~The whole of this day' necupied by two Memorials on the subject of the Yellow River.
(1) The first la a joint Memorial from the Governor-General at Nanking, Director-General of Grain T ig on the subject of diverting thirty of the volume of the Yellow River to its old bed, as proposed by Chang Yao, Governor of Shantung, and Vu Pochuan, one of the Superintendents of the Peking Gravaries, After a careful and thorough investigation of the whole subject, the Memorislists lave come to the conclu t the project is impossible of adoption, an opinion which has subsequently been endorsed by the Director-General of the Yellow River and the Governor of Honan in correspondence with the Memorialists, The following are, in brief, the tensons which have the Memorialists in their unau The old bed of the Yellow River passing through the Kiang-peh region is over 900 li in length, and it is more than thirty years since the river deserted this bed for ite present course. Hence it is full of unevennesses: and irregularities, me places and depret he bed hes been cultivation by numerous squatters, in addition to the lands which have been apportioned as allotments to the military. lu many places, again, all trac of the old bed have disappeared, and it impossible to say where it actually did flow. Although " river does exist b Yang Chuang, it is but end shallow stream which in winter and spring, while from Yun-t'i Kuan to the sea bed is formed of hard sand which be hard to dig out, So much for the condition of the actual bed of the i rds the embankments, ther are 1,606,000 feet in length on side, and 1,442,000 feet on the northern 0 wot been repaired for thirty y dare consequently in a very dilapidated condition, being out, to boot, in some places by Pri during the Nienfei rebellion, in addition, 1 ments which are all spoilt, Chang Yao's Memorial on the subject of the work required to place the uld bed in a to receive the water, ho states man can heap up a fang (10 feot square by one foot high) ina day, But he forgets that when this earth is rammed down it will be reduced to much less than a fang, It will thus be seen that who: hundred li have to be dealt with, what with dredging and building of embankments, the labour and expense will stalk " that will be wanted, Another enormous, not to montia e and millet
consideration ti ta itself is the fact pr the Grand Canal and the land that must not be lost sight of. the waters of the Huai and Yellow Ri centrate at Yung Chuang abov kiang P'u. When the flood the Yellow River will pour into and ruin it; and as soon with silt it will ble land in its vicinity. If, therefore, the old bed Yellow River is to be made ni citation of the old sluices and other worke that were used for this purpose. The Memoriulists, there: fore, while unable to prophecy whether the project will be a success or tot, feel it their duty to point out that the experiment Will entail a large expenditure of money. The agricultural population along the el bed of the river are poor in th and though they cannot complain of bein; ousted from which has been illegally occupied by them, they are honest folie as compared with walt smugglers, robbere, ete., it is surely no part of the Imperial policy to reduce them to a condition
would be reduced if they were evicted, of absolute pour and poverty, as they Vu Po-ch'uau, in his Mem subject, refers to the w with which the project is regarded by the population of the Kiangnan region. This no doubt is the case, for the people ace that the works would create a demand for labour by which they would be the immediate gainers, forgetting that when the work was over they would not only b unemployed, but would not have. th extortion as was sible lier times, Finally, under present conditions, there is often insufficient water in the Yellow River enable the grain fleet to pass into the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.