Directory_and_Chronicle_1842 — Page 585

1842.

Topography of Shantung.

567

of the 14th century. In his time a part of the canal in Shántung province became so impassable, that the coasting passage by sea began to be most used. This was the very thing that the canal had been intended to prevent; Sung accordingly adopted the plan of an old man, uamed Píying, a resident in that part of the country, to concentrate the waters of the Yun hó and neighboring streams, and bring them down upon the canal as they are at present. History states that Sung employed 'three hundred thousand' men to carry the plan into operation, and that the work was completed in two hundred days. On both sides of us, nearly level with the canal, were extensive swamps with a shallow covering of water, which the Chi- nose dignify with the name of hú, 'lakes,' and which they plant extensively with the Nelumbium, useful for its roots and seeds. These were occasionally separated from us by very narrow banks, along which the trackers walked, and the width of the canal some- times did not exceed five-and-twenty yards." Vol. I., page 251.

"On reaching the part of the canal which skirts or passes through a lake called Túshán hú, the left bank was entirely submerged, and the canal confounded with the lake. All within range of the eye was swamp, and coldness, and desolation-in fact a vast inland sea, as many of the large boats at a distance were hull down, or invisi- ble except the masts. We were here at no great distance from Kiufau hien, the birth-place of the sage Confucius, lying on our left, to whose honor we saw a temple erected, with a school or college for students, shortly before we reached the lake just mentioned. A chain of mountains was visible at a considerable distance on the southeast. The swamps on the following day were kept out of sight by some very decent villages on the high banks, which, from per- petual accumulation, assumed in some places the aspect of hills. After breakfast I walked for about an hour and a half with lord Am- herst, and came to that point of the canal where it is crossed at right angles by a river, which is therefore called Shitsz' hó, or 'Cross river,' styled in Barrow's maps 'the Four rivers,' where the course is cut through a low hill to the depth of thirty feet. We soon afterwards came again in sight of the dreary marshes, continuing to infest our course as far as Yellow river." Vol. I., page 258.

"A part of our journey on the first of October lay along a portion of the canal where the banks particularly to the right, were elabor- ately and strongly faced with stone; a precaution which seemed to imply a greater than ordinary danger from inundations. In fact the fakes, or rather floods, seemed to extend at present nearly to the

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