Delving into Chinese history from the semilegendary period of the Three Kingdoms onwards there is an abundance of interesting e applicable to events on the Yangtze is.once again a great battlefield. Then, as now, large armies fought along its banks and large fleets of ships fought on its waters although the association was much happier than the present situation arising from the capture of Anking and the Japanese naval movement up the river, Anking, capital of Anhwei province, was not established as early as this period of heroes, strategists and knights which, in a romantic sense, dates Chinese history. The city was founded about the year 1280 towards the end of the Sung dyne: and its builders were refugees fleeing from the Mongols who found its high elevation, and its position on the river of great strategic and defensive lue. For centuries it was unaffected by the change of dynasties until the Taiping rebellion when it was almost completely destroyed and some of the trenches and embankments still remain to illustrate the onslaught of fury and devastation. Since then the city has been rebuilt but the Great Pagoda, outside the city and built in 1580, remains one of the finest of its kind in the Yangtze, To it attaches a number of legends. It has a nautical derivation and Anking's importance with the river has resulted in its builders fixing. two anchors to the structure, which is seven storeys high, In general belief it is supposed to play the part of a mast and sway in the breeze, and this is connected with a local superstition, according to one authority, that nobody with the name of "Peng" meaning "sail" or "Chang," meaning "oar" should be appointed to high office because this would mean that the city would down river. The occupation of this city y Japanese naval and military forces poses a difficult question whether the superstition is not just imagination but a definite prediction g is now a naval and military base and although this is no time to indulge in historic fantasies when aeroplanes, high explosives, tanks and warships are' disturbing China's calm it is an interesting point to mention.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.