Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Wanderings in China
Note earth-laden waters. - These Chinese rivers deposit such quantities of soil, that they are continually raising their chan nels higher and higher above the level of the surrounding plain; consequently it is not only necessary to construct stupendous embankments to keep the water-?oods in their self-chosen beds, but also to continue ceaselessly raising and strengthening them. These cyclopean banks of mud, or of basket-work full of small boulders and faced with brick and stone, extend for hundreds of miles, and at some points are so high that to reach the summit one has to ascend sixty or seventy granite steps, above the level of the boundless plain, to find one's self standing on the brink of a swift mighty river, perhaps half a mile in width. Such banks have to be built so as to allow for the river's natural rise of fully 20 feet in the rainy season.
It is evident that only by ceaseless vigilance can these enormous earthworks be kept in thorough repair, and Government officials are enjoined to bestow the utmost attention to this subject. Needful repairs are executed in winter and spring, when the waters are at the lowest, and enormous sums are thus expended even in ordinary years.
But no amount of human care can always avail against the might of such a stream as the Great Yellow River, when, in autumn, it pours down from the mountains with about ten times its winter volume, ?owing rapidly for a distance of about 2000 miles, its waters charged with sand and yellow earth, which it deposits all along its course, raising its bed and forming shallows, till at length the ?ood either over?ows the channel or forces a passage through embankments, soddened by weeks of rain. Then follow appalling inundations, transforming whole counties into gigantic lakes, drown ing all living creatures, and covering the land with a deposit which, for one season at least, is fatal to all agriculture, and Often leaves great tracts transformed into feverish swamps.
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