uz Yellow River, when it traverses Kansu in a northerly direction on its way to Mongolia, is described by travellers as flowing with a full stream which is maintained in Mongolia. Here it. is apt to pass over the embankment which encloses it on each side, and when it does so it renders the flat lands near it quite marshy. The Mongol in his tent moves away, when this happens, to a dry site and no one is seriously incommoded. Hue states that the river is clear when it passes out of Kansu to Mongolia, and that it there becomes muddy from the sand bed through which it has dug its chanel. According to the map it flows from Lanchow, capital of Kunsu, in a northeast. direction for 420 miles till it reaches 41} degrees of latitude. It is in this part of its course that it recei from the sands of the Alashan country its yellow colour, The winds of winter constantly blowing from the Alashan mountains towards Kansu and Shensi convey vast quantities of the finest yellow dust, which if taken up in the fingers is said by travellers to flow through them like water. The mighty stream laden with this dust proceeds south-east for 200 miles and then south between Shensi and Shansi for 350 through a succession of plains and mountains to the celebrated pass, the 'loong-kwan. Here what it would receive of solid substances would be pebbles, sand, stones and various sorts of mineral matter. It seems quite plain from the journals of travellers that it is the five hundred miles occupied by the river in the vicinity of the Mongolian sand mountains that give it its peculiar burden of yellow silt. This fine dust is the chief constituent in the soil of Chihli, Shantung, Honan and the northern end of Kiangsu and it has been originally deposited at the bottom of an ancient sea after being carried there by rivers from Kokonor and Tibetan mountains. Its remarkable fineness enables it to travel so far as to be useful in making one of the largest deltas in the world. The size of that delta. may be judged of by the distance of its apex from the sea at Tientsin and in northern Kiangsu. It is in both instances nearly or about 400 miles.
'A telegraphic service has not yet been organised to Lanchow the capital of Kansu. Here the Yellow River when it arrives is already a mighty stream which after crossing through Kokonor has attained a length of about 500 miles. In this region the maps shew many affluents from mountains joining to swell the river. Only such' minerals as are soluble will go on with the stream. The rest must merely encumber the bed. But the freshets may arise here; and as the river is enbanked throughout its course in Mongolia, it may be concluded that a large part of the water in Honan inundations has flowed all the way from Kokonor and north-eastern Tibet. There a long watershed separates the basin of the Yellow River from that of the chief affluent of the Yangtze-kiang. It is curious that upon the 98th and 99th meridians these two great rivers, the RiverofGolden Sand, the affluent in question, and the Yellow River, flow parallel to each other at an interval of not much more than fifty miles for a considerable distance. The same rains swell both rivers. The same melting of snow causes both of them to rise sometimes many feet in height in the early summer. But the streams soon diverge, and the River of Golden Sand proceeds south to Yunnan, where it is a thousand miles distant from the Yellow River in its northern bend. This shows us that while the former stream follows the ordinary slope to the south-east from the high land of Central Asia, the Yellow River traverses in Tartary a depression to the north, on the plateau where the sand lies, and then finds its down from the plateau into the of Shansi and Shensi receiving streams of these two provinces. Tt. will arrive at the Toong-kwan laden with the silt and dissolved minerals of three provinces and a part of Kokonor and Mongolia, after meandering along a course of seventeen hundred miles. Let us suppose that in the Kokonor country the velocity of the river is four miles an hour, and over the pate after Lanchow three miles an hour, high estimate. At this rate the Kokonor rains would be felt at Kaifeng-fu sixteen days after the swelling flood had left Lanchow and the fact should be announced by telegram at Kai-feng. if there was a rainfall in Mongolia, it shawld be announced from the ford near Kw cheng, six hundred miles from Kai-feng. The river authorities would then know when to expect the flood, and should there be rain in Honan the most prompt and decided action would be required to keep the embankments in a suitable condition to resist the coming flood. Pelegraphic information is required in both cases in Honan, where the great danger is concentrated, and also in places lower down between Honan and the sea. The advantage of this knowledge would be incalculably great if the river in all dangerous parts were provided with a staff of workmen under skilled leaders, who could prevent an i ion by strengthening the banks oak poi But, perhaps, it vain to hope that these simple remedial measures will be adopted, or if adopted by the superior officials faithfully carried out by the river authorities.
A question has been raised by the correspondents of newspapers, as to when ther the Yellow River is destructive or not. In answer it may be said that diluvial action is destructive whenever it forces coarse sand, gravel, and stones in large masses away from their original spots and spreads them thickly over cultivated lands. But when fine sand is deposited gently over cultivated lands it enriches the soil, because, whether it come from limestone, sandstone or granite, its constituents are useful. Even quartz when in a fine powder helps wheat to grow because it contains silica. The coarse sand of diluvial inundations settles in thick heaps on good soil and_utterly spoils it. Thus the Yellow River in one place ruins fertile lands and in another enriches poor lands. The sand of Mongolia is not per se useless for improving the lands of the Yellow River delta. "Being detritus ground to great fineness by the brooks and streams which brought it from Tibetan mountains, itis as capable of feeding vegetable life on China's eastern plains as more favoured deposits. Yet on the sides of the Alashan mountains where it can mix with nothing but itself, and rain pours through it swiftly on account of its looseness, it grows not a blade of grass. The Yellow River when it brings Mongolian sand twelve or fifteen hundred miles in suspension to the plains of Chihli and northern Kiangsu only adds to their richness, but in times of continued rain the floods of the affluents of the Yellow River, breaking their barriers in Honan, Shantung and Chihli, disappoint the industrious farmers of a thousand villages by hopelessly overwhelming with sand and gravel their ancestral plots, where millet, rice, and vegetables had grown for centuries, THE PEACEABLENESS OF THE CHINESE, Tue first impression which the tra-yeller receives on visiting the Chinese Empire, is that of magnitude. China seems vast, too vast in fact. The same is true of the Asiatic Continent. It has been criticised as being in all respects on too large a scale. Its plateaux are too broad, its mountains too high, its rivers too full, its populations too enormous, its famines too devastating. Prof. De Morgan has affirmed that the German language has seven deadly sins—"too many volumes in the Inngnage, too many sentences in a volume, too many words in a sentence, too many syllables in a word, too many letters in a syllable, too many strokes in a letter, too much black in a stroke." In like manner, it may be predicated of the Chinese Empire, that it contains too many countries, its countries have too many provinces, its provinces too many prefectures, its prefectures too many districts, its districts too many villages, its villages too many families, and its families too many persons. Its millions teem. Wherever there is a sufficient expanse of water they overflow, and become amphibious not to say aquatic, Wherever there are mountains these millions burrow their way into defiles and recesses, like a worm in an apple, 'There is one aspect of this density of population, to which we are so accustomed that it fails to impress us, as it might. It is the comparative peaceableness of the Chinese race. Perhaps we should not say ' comparative cableness' but superlative. peace: ableness. By what force are these vast
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.