(rom ace soochow connzsroxpENt.)
Perhaps brief neces on a trip to the northern part of this province might not prove uninteresting to some of the readers of the "N.-C. Daily News."
The Grand Canal.
The writer was specially struck with the beauty of this great water-way above Tsingkiangp'u. It is very wide and curves very gracefully like the Soochow creek west of Wongdu. There are no side canals but this seems to be the one stream that drains the upper end of the province. The banks are very high and it is said they are quite necessary in the flood seasons. The locks abore Tsingkiangp'n, built of great hewn stones and risng twenty or twenty-five fect above the water are a credit to any nation. They are much higher than the Liverpool docks. There is scarcely a gunboat in these waters; the soldiers evidently stay in camps on the shore. The boatmen will not track at night for fear of being robbed of their clothing, but they will row down stream in the star light. The boats are all clumsy and heavy, with nothing to take the place of the light native house boats of the Kiangnan.
The Old Bed of the Yellow River.
Our definition of a "bed" is a piece of furniture elevated above the floor on which we may sleep in comfort. The bed of the old river has the elevation, but the troublesome giant. of the north would not rest at case. The outer banks are two miles apart. Sections of the old bed have silted upwards till it is from fifteen to twenty feet above the country on each side. It furnishes an elevated plateau for the growth of grain. It is a witness against the stupendous folly of man in trying to restrain by levees the great arteries of a country.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.