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THE GRAND CANAL AND LOWER HOANG-HO. 185
Owing to the narrowness of the navigable channel, large vessels are now obliged to
anchor some distance off the bar, although it has a depth of 7 feet even at low
water. The cargoes, transhipped to smaller craft, are carried to Tiemen-kwan,
24 miles above the mouth of the river, beyond which point the " ungovernable
Houug-ho " has almost ceased to be available for navigation. Its upper course in
K ;i 1 1 su might be navigable by small boats ; but here the natives prefer the road to
the river for transporting their produce.
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THE GRAND CANAL AND LOWER HOANG-HO.
The " Grand Canal " so often spoken of by travellers, especially
j
in ttie last
century, is one of the great monuments of human industry, although, perhaps, less
wonderful than it may seem to be at first sight. It is not a cutting, like so many
European works of the kind, carried by a series of locks over extensive tracts at
different levels, but simply consists of a string of abandoned watercourses, lakes,
and swamps, all connected together by short artificial channels. Hence it has
almost everywhere preserved the aspect of a winding river, constantly varying in
width. As related by Marco Polo, the Emperor Kublai Khan, towards the end of
the thirteenth century, created the Yun-ho, or " River of Transports," as it was
named, mostly by connecting river with river, lagoon with lagoon. Even before
that epoch goods were conveyed by water and across a series of difficult portages from
the Yang-tze to the Pei-ho basin. But although the course of the canal wab thus
already indicated and partly constructed by nature, none the less enormous are the
sums that have been spent on the formation, and especially on the maintenance, of
this great navigable artery.
Thousands of hands have been constantly employed in
dredging, embanking, protecting the exposed sections from the fury of the winds,
so that a regular canal constructed on the European principle would have probably
been less expensive in the end. The Grand Canal, which is mainly fed by the
Iloang-ho, the Wan-ho, and other streams from Shantung, has in recent times lost
much of its importance, and is at present in such a bad state that the navigation is
actually interrupted at some points. Since the introduction of steam Peking and
North China receive their supplies chiefly from the sea, so that the inland navigation
for which the canal was constructed has no longer the same commercial and
economic significance. It still, however, presents many advantages for the local
traffic, and it may be hoped that the work of restoration, already begun
at the
Tientsin end, will soon render this artery navigable by steamers throughout its
entire length, from the Pe'i-ho to the Yang-tze basin.
According to one estimate the mean discharge of the Hoang-ho is about 80,000
cubic feet per second, or nearly equal to that of the Nile. The sedimentary
matter brought down in its turbid waters is slowly yet perceptibly diminishing the
basins of the Gulf of Pechili and Yellow Sea. Stauiiton and Barrow have calculated
that these alluvia would be sufficient to create, in twenty-five days, an island half a
square mile in extent and 120 feet thick. They have further calculated that in
about twenty-four thousand years the Yellow Sea will have entirely disappeared,
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