Untitled

198
EAST ASIA.
per second, and at high water in August 1,260,000 cubic feet. Assuming that the
proportion between rainfall and discharge is maintained throughout its lower course,
the average volume of the Yang-tze would be 858,000 cubic feet, or six times that
of the Nile, and ten times that of the Rhone.
When instituting comparisons between their two great water highways, the
Chinese never fail to contrast the beneficent character of the southern with the
disastrous influence of the northern stream, which they have entitled the " Scourge
of the Sons of Han." The Yang-tze has never caused such widespread ruin as that
which has attended the shiftings
of the Hoang-ho, nor is any river in the world
more useful for navigation.
If it does not yet number as many
steamers as the
Mississippi, or even the Volga, it is none the less crowded with flotillas of junks
and river craft of every description, while its floating population is numbered by
Fig. 90. NAVIGABLE COUIISE OP THE YANO-TZE AND ITS TKIBUTAUIES.
Navigable for
Steamers.
Scale 1 : 20,000,000.
105* E of G
Navigable 1'cr
Boats.
Orensionally
navigable.
- 300 Mill's.
Unnavigable or
unexplored.
hundreds of thousands. Marco Polo was certainly guilty of no exaggeration when
he declared that the waters of the " Kian " bore more vessels laden with more
merchandise than on all the united seas and rivers of Christendom. A conflagration
caused by lightning in the port of Uchang in 1850 consumed seven hundred
large junks and thousands of small boats, and on this occasion as many as fifty
thousand people are said to have perished by fire or water. One local merchant
alone ordered no less than ten thousand coffins. Thus were destroyed in a single
port more boatmen than are found in all France. The Taiping rebellion, which
raged chiefly along the banks of the Yang-tze and its great affluents, for a time
swept the river of its inhabitants. But since the restoration of peace
the local
trade has revived, and long lines of craft engaged in peaceful pursuits have again
made their appearance on its waters. But these flotillas are from time to time