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A. D. BLUE
Chungking. Junks which sailed on the Middle River and above were designed for shoal water, and were lighter in construction as well as smaller than the Lower River junks, but still strong enough to withstand constant grounding. Naturally the largest type of junk was found on the Lower River, and this was as big as ocean-going junks. Such junks rarely went above Nanking. River junks were not usually painted like sea-going junks, but were coated with wood oil instead.
On the Upper River there were many types of junks, such as only the ingenuity of Chinese could devise. Among the more exotic types designed to cope with the peculiar and exacting conditions found on certain stretches of the Upper River were junks with crooked bows and others with crooked sterns. The largest junks on the Upper River were 120 feet long and carried 60 tons of cargo up river and about 90 tons down river, and took 25 to 60 days between Ichang and Chungking, depending on the season and state of the river. These large junks had a crew of about 100 men, of whom three-quarters were trackers.
The Yangtse is subject to remarkable changes in level, caused by the melting snows in Tibet, and by the time taken by these to reach the Lower River. In the high water season of summer the level in the Middle and Lower River is as much as 35 feet above the winter level. In August 1866 the rise at Hankow was 50 feet, and it has been twice as much in the Upper River. During floods great stretches of the Lower River become immense lakes, exceeding 20 miles in width at places between Nanking and Hankow. At such time no land can be seen between the deck of a river steamer and the distant foothills. Thousands of villages may be inundated during such a flood, and every few years when flooding is more than usually severe, hundreds of thousands of lives are lost. The greatest floods on record were those of the summer of 1931, when 25 million people in an area of 700,000 square miles were affected, and 140,000 were drowned. On this occasion the streets in the Wuhan cities were flooded to a depth of 9 feet, and the surrounding country to 35 feet. The Yangtse Valley is so fertile, however, and the pressure on the land so great, that the inhabitants always return when the river falls, after encamping in the hills during the floods.