The heavy rains, reported some time ago, have not been repeated, and those regions which were inundated simply by the local rainfall are gradually emerging into view, as the porous earth absorbs the unwonted deluge. The same cannot be said, however, of the wide district called ' under the bank,' which has been gradually filling up, to the total ruin of every kind of crop. Some parts of this area are relatively much lower than the others. The inhabitants of the higher tracts, are in the habit of congratulating themselves that their villages will not be reached by the water. If they take any steps at all, it is merely to throw up a bank, to divert the water towards lower regions beyond. Before it_can return on the other side, it is hoped that it will have spent its force. At the lowest part of the great flat, which is in reality a kind of pocket, there was a kind of cross-dam, thrown up upon warning of impending trouble. But in this, asin several other cases, the hank was so low, that when the floods really reached it, although many days after the break took place in the river, the bank was melted down at once, and in consequence communication by cart with the most important market town in the county, and the one in which all grain taxes are paid, is wholly cut off. This will continue until the crops on the higher land have been gathered, when a cart-road will be gradually made along the high ground, following the bank of the newly excavated sluice-way already described. This channel really seems to have been so deepened this year as to carry off a great deal of water for the first time; but as there was just as much left afterwards, and more than enough to drown out everything, the results were not perfectly satisfactory, unless perhaps to the w-i-yuans who had the matter in charge. The only to guard such essential) defenceless territory, as that new rus, which is several feet below the general level around, would be to run cross banks in such a way as to save the highest land. This is just what the Chinese try to do, as already mentioned. If fully carried out, the flat would be divided, like the hold of a ship by bulkheads. But to this there are two obstacles, general indifference, resulting in the let things alone' policy, already welt upon, and the lack of unity of aim among contiguous villagers, The very same evils which destroyed Greece are a great menace to China. "Each village, or group of villages, makes its own little dyke, and thereupon there is war, till the dyke is really cut, and the ruin is equally diffused. In one case related to us the other day, a little variation of the programme Was tried. Three or four villages on higher ground wished to renew an old bank to "turn the water", but realising the folly of such a proceeding without cou-ciliating others, they began operations by sending red cards to the adjacent villages, situated on lower ground, dwelling on the tradition that ' Within the Four Seas all are brethren", and offering to share their grain and fuel with the neighbouring villages, if the bank might be allowed to stand. If the hank should get injured, they argued, neither of us would have any: thing, but if it can stand till our crops are ripe, all that's mine is thine This sensible procedure, so compatible with Chinese ideas, was quite successful so far as the other villages went. Unfortunately, just as the villages on the higher ground began to feel sure of their little crops, word was brought that a new break had taken place some thirty {i north of Linch'ing, and the vast volume of waters is now pouring over the wretched country, so that nothing will be left! Some of the population of these villages were refugees from the eastern parts of Shantung, driven away by the Hloods of the Yellow River last year, and were prudently waiting to return after the dangerous season is past. Tu one ease a whole group of miserable women of this class made their appearance in the writer's premises, having barely escaped with the children, leaving their wheelbarrows—\their only possessions—behind, Such people, drowned out in the east, and then again in the west, areas the Chinese phrase
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.