Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 548

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Topography of the Yellow River.

SEP.

addressed in a volley of crackers as a token of thanks for his propitious and friendly aid.

"The width at this place was full three quarters of a mile; and the stream, where strongest, ran with the rapidity of seven or eight miles an hour; and the water was as thick and muddy as if the heaviest torrents of rain had just de- scended, whereas, in fact, there had not fallen a shower for many months."

Sir John Davis describes the passage here as not at all dangerous, though it would probably be so in a high wind for the cluinsy barges of the Chinese; the stream is about two thirds of a mile wide, and estimated to average eight feet in depth. The channel nuust be far deeper than this, however; but in consequence of the bar at the mouth, the entrance is probably difficult. Sir John thinks that the evils inflicted upon the Chinese by the opium and guns of his coun- trymen would be more than compensated, if the government would call to its aid the engineering science of a Brunel to operate on the Yellow R. and Grand Canal, restraining the devastations of the form- er, and increasing the facilities of the latter. The navigation of the river is often seriously impeded in the spring by the floating ice; and the ice is so strong in some parts of Sháusí during winter that wains and loaded animals cross on it.

The number of cities and towns along the Yellow river in its Lower course is almost incalculable, and if the basin of the R. Hwai be in- cluded, no region of country in the world of the same extent can compare with it for populousness and fertility. From Tungkwán in Shepsi to its mouth, thirty district towns occur near the banks of the Hwáng ho alone, while in the basin of the Hwái he, there are more than fifty. The prefect cities of Honán fú and Hwáifung fú, Káifung, the provincial capital, Wei-hwni fü and Kweiteh fú, all lie on or near the Yellow river in Honán province; and in Kiángsú, the two important cities of Süchau fú and Hwai-ngán fú. The basin of the R. IIwái comprises about one half of Nginhwai, and three fifths of Honán, many of its headwaters rising in the Hiung-'rh shán or Bear Mts., within a few miles of the Yangtsz' kiáng. From the town of Tsing ho, where the Grand canal crosses it, to the mouth, the country is so low that few large places occur; Ngántung and Fauning 寧 are the only district towns within this distance. No seaport exists

at the embouchure, and this vast body of water almost imperceptibly joins the ocean, the colored waters of the iver being seen more than a hundrel miles from the shore. Brrow has given the result of some calculations, from which it appears that fully two millions solid feet of earth are deposite 1 in the Yellow sea every hour by this river alone, enough to make an island in it a mile square every seven'y days.