Wonderful Modern Engineering Feat: $30,000,000 Damage jin One Flood: A Permanent Safeguard for $1,500,000 China is " land of wonders and times into the Yellow Sea. There ug so many of them are eantur are indications that bu one ocfoe old. and therefore have casion it emptied into the Lower TGmantic "interest attaching Yangtze. For nearly 1,000 years them, it is quite possible that an prior to 1883 the Huangho enter-be} ed the Yellow Sea a short di Rehievement to-day' that -may fas great as any of them may be passed by with scant notice, Suchy For instance, as the taming the Yellow River, In fact, some Mine any that it is just, tke majern "utilitarianien, with Ten months of skilful' engineer: ing work, to wipe out such an Eikstanding "and. sensational feadline us "China's Sor-Tow''—for there is good reason fo believe that, us a direct result the work completed Inst, year there willie more "joy fluence amongst the peasantry Tiving near the great river im Shantung than ever therd was sorrow or poverty onused by, the breaking down of its banks. Then fagein, comparatively few people, unless they are engineers, though They can understand that the Great Wall and the Grand Canal fare monumental works, can appre @iate also that they are marvel fous examples of construction. Still less, if Tayman stood. on the new bank of the Yellow River fand watched the water flowing by fu-a channel where it might have been running for centuries, woul he appreciate what had been Rebioved. The" Culebra, Cut 'a minor enthusiasm 18 the ordinary. traveller and he coomes somewhat more demon sees the great fecks, fut the vast lakes which were'n feature of the construc; tional work of the canal through the isthmus of Panama fate just pretty stretches of water.
HNORMOUS DESTRUCTION, Sorroit" In the loss of lives and The damage caused by "China's
property through, the ages is in-Ealeulablo, but it will be ro-called. that, in August, 1981, the fiver broke through its northerly Gyke ab Kungehiapa, flooding portions of five haven and making More than a quarter of w million: people homeless. Over 860 towns Rud. vill¥iges wore destroyed and the' material loss must have amounted to maw millions dollars, to sny nothing of, the joss of life and the sufferings of fon the. people from the results famine, The work which has Been completed cost. $1,500,000 it hag stood very severe tosts and 18 believed by exports to be thoroughly reliable and to be all tat fs required at that particular part, which is the most danger Sus." One estimate of the damage Gone in 1921 which has been actepted as certainly not too high. gives a loss of from twenty to thirty million dollars. Comparing tone year's loss in one section with the "amount required to make that section. safe, one gets a remarkchlo illustration of how much could be done to make the whole of the Yellow River permanently safe if an amount equivalent to this one loss were spread over m number of years conservancy work, work stich Rs the conservancy of the Yellow River cannot successfully be undertaken. starting operations with a know: edge only of things as they are at the moment, The "more. that can be discovered of past hapening, even in prehistoric times, the more likely is success be sichioved. The Adia, Devel-lopment. Ca. was responsible for the clever engineering feat ae complished Inst year and Mr. P. Whitham, the President and) General Manager, tells a very ment of the region, based on data infarcting story" of, the, deveioytheir engineers have collected. tance south of Haichow, but that year a break occurred near Kaifeng and the river found the course to the Gulf of Chibli that. it_ mow occupies.
'There is a plausible theory to' the effect that at one tims te Shantung mountains formed an and, the groat northern plain the being a shallow inland sea, which was turned into land by, the deposits brought down by the Huangho. As a matter of fact, the process of building up the Yond' in the northern plain not completed when the carly Chinese settlers appeared on the cone more than 4,000 years ago. Nature not having completed the jab, the people who occupied the Huangho plains have eon in The new trouble almost continyoualy,.. in spite. of" much. ingenuity.' die: pplayed.in combating the forces of, the, river.
The most destructive break: it thio Yellow River dyke since 1853 inigo occurred near Kaifeng, in 1878." A large part of the river flowed southeast if ito the Huat River basin, causing loss of life and great destruction of crops and other property. The first attempt to close th breacly failed, but the following year, con ditions being ospeciatiy favour blo, the break wile successfully repaired at a. cost of about Tls. 6,000,000. 'This was one of the few occasions in history when a major breach was repaired, 'The Chinese engineers, beginning with Ta Vu (Vu' the Gieat), 4,000 years ago, down to recent years, have done remarkably well, considering what they had to work with and the limited hydraulic knowledge available.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.