Another thing that struck me with surprise was the suitability of the dykes on either side of the canal in the northern section, for a railroad. The country is almost perfectly level and there is danger of overflow, 80 there are dykes along the shores and also a few hundred yards back of these there are two dykes, one on either side. These dykes are twelve, fifteen, and twenty feet high and fifteen or thirty feet wide. They are now in good condition to be smoothed for carriage roads or railroads, There are a few streams entering the canal between Chinking and Yangchow, but after that there are long distances unbroken by outlets, so that we see no bridges along the sides and there are none over the Grand Canal.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.