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Topography of Shantung.
Oct.
sides to break the force of blows. The slowness of our progress, which for the last week averaged only twenty miles a day, gave us abundant leisure to observe the country. Its appearance continued to improve, with diversified surface and clumps of trees amidst the cultivation. The cotton shrub, tobacco, hemp, and various grains, as wheat and sesamum, appeared to be the things chiefly grown. Indeed the great quantity of cotton which we saw during our jour- ney, seemed to prove that the importations from India must form a very inconsiderab's portion of the consumption of this vast empire, in which the whole of the inferior orders are universally clothed in cotton garments." Vol. I., page 249.
"We now began to make better progress on the canal than we had hitherto done. The stream, though against us, was not strong, except near the sluices, where it was confined. As the month of September drew to a close, the weather became cloudy and cold to a remarkable degree, considering our latitude. A strong northerly wind and rain brought the thermometer in our boats down to sixty degrees in the morning. In the afternoon we stopped at a place called Káiho chin. The last word signifies a military station, or 'corps de garde,' and the first two syllables imply the opening or commencement of the river,' which led to the inference that this must have been the point from whence the canal was begun; an opinion rendered still more probable by our vicinity to the highest point, whence the current runs down north and south in opposite directions. At Káiho chin a large party of us went on shore, and took a long walk through the adjoining village. The great stone rollers used by the Chinese for pressing the grain from the husk, or for leveling the newly-ploughed ground, appeared to be of black marble with white veins; but the stone of which the piers are con- structed had a siliceous appearance, and broke like flint. The neigh- boring hills must no doubt supply an abundance of stone. A famous mountain of Shantung is called by the Chinese Taishán, and is pro. bably the highest of the range.
"On the 28th we arrived at the influx of the Yun hó, where the stream turned in our favor, and flowed to the southward, being the highest point of the canal, and a place of some note. The Yun hó flows into the canal on its eastern side nearly at right angles, and a part of it going to the north, the other part runs southward; while a strong facing of stone on the western bank of the canal sustains the force of the influx. This seems to have been the work of Sungli who lived under the first emperor of the Ming dynasty, at the end