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Topography of the Yellow River.
SEP.
deluge of Ya spoken of in the Book of Records was an inundation of the Great Plain by the forcing of the present passage, and not an imperfect tradition of the Noachic deluge. The Wei passes through a rich region, receiving many tributaries before it reaches Lintsing. At present the Hwang ho runs in one channel eastward, and near the town of Kaifung fú it borders on a very flat country, which is exposed to occasional overflowings. As the adjacent country is very low, it was at an early period considered necessary to protect it against the inundations by dikes built of quarried granite, of great strength. These dikes extend about 100 miles along the southern banks of the river. This had the effect, which has also been ex- perienced in the Po and Rhine, of raising the bed of the river, so that even when the river is low, its surface is considerably above the ad- jacent plain. This plain, whose soil is exclusively formed by alluvial detritus, is of extraordinary fertility, and covered with almost innumer- able villages and towns. When therefore the river, being unusually swollen, breaks through the dikes, the loss of life and property is immense; and as the country subject to such inundations, according to the opinion of Barrow, is equal in area to the island of Great Britaiu, the truth of the assertion made by the emperor Kienlung to Lord Macartney, that the Hwang ho gave him more trouble than all the other cares of government, may be understood in its full force. Be- sides the regular expenses for maintaining the dikes in repair, which annually amount to more than a million of pounds sterling, govern- ment is alway anxious to contrive some means of averting the calanii- ties of inundations. The emperors Kánghi and Kienlung especially have done much towards that object. In the reign of the last-men- tioned monarch, a large canal was made for the purpose of avoiding the too great accumulation of water in the Hwang ho, which joined it with the headwaters of one of the upper streams of the R. Hwái in ffung hien, either the Peh-sh4 ho or Kiú-hwáng ho (Old Yellow R.). This excavation is nearly a hundred miles long, and has had the effect of lowering the general surface of the river many feet, and rendering large tracts of land formerly under water fit for cultivation.
About 70 miles above its mouth, the Hwáng ho receives a great supply of water by the channel by which Lake Hung-tsih dis- charges its waters. This lake receives not only the waters brought from the Hwang ho by the new canal, but also those of the Hwai ho. The numerous rivers which unite with the Hwái ho drain the extensive country which extends between the Hwang ho and Yangtsz' kiáng, and most of them rise in the eastern offset of the Peh-ling range. The