Korea and her neighbors / A narrative of travel, with an account of the recent vicissitudes and present position of the country

by Isabella L. Bird

Telegrams later in the English papers announced “Great floods in Manchuria,” but of the magnitude of the inundation which destroyed for that season the magnificent crops of the great fertile plain of the Liau, and swept away many of its countless farming villages, only the experience of sailing over it could give any idea.

In that miserable night there were barkings of dogs, shouts of men, mewings of cats, and general noises of unrest, and in the morning, of the village of Piengdo opposite to which we had moored the evening before, only one house and a barn remained, which were shortly carried away. Many of the people had escaped in boats, and the remainder, with their fowls, dogs, and cats, were in the spreading branches of a large tree. Although the mast of my boat was considerably in the way, and it was difficult to make fast, I succeeded in rescuing the whole menagerie and in transferring it in two trips to a village on the other side, which was then 5 feet above the water.

We had reached the most prosperous region of Manchuria, a plain 60 miles in length, of deep, rich alluvial soil, bearing splendid crops, the most lucrative of which are the bean, the oil from which is the staple export of the country, the opium poppy, and tobacco. The great and small millet, wheat, barley, melons, and cucumbers cover the ground, mulberry trees for the silkworm surround the farmhouses, and the great plain is an idyll of bounteousness and fertility. Of all this not a trace remained, except in a few instances the tops of the 8-feet millet, which supplies the people not only with food, but with fuel, and fodder for their animals.

The river bank burst during the night, and the waters were raging into the plain, from which I missed many a brown-roofed village, which the evening before stood among its willow and poplar trees. At 11 a fair wind sprang up, junks began to move, and my boatmen, who had talked of returning, untied and moved too. After an exciting scene at a bend, where the river, leaping like a rapid, thumped the junks against the opposite shore, we passed one wrecked village after another, bits of walls of houses alone standing. The people and their fowls were in the trees. The women clung to their fowls as much as to their babies. Dugouts, scows, and a few junks, mine among them, were busy saving life, and we took three families and their fowls to Sho-wa Ku, a large junk port, where a number of houses were still standing. These families had lost all their household goods and gods, as well as mules, pigs, and dogs. On our way we sailed into a farmyard to try to get some eggs, and the junk not replying to her helm, thumped one of the undermined walls down. It was a large farmhouse and full of refugees. The water was 3 feet deep in the rooms, naked children were floating about in tubs, and the women, looking resigned, sat on the tables. The men said that it was the last of four houses, and that they might as well be dead, for they had lost all their crops and their beasts.

A fearful sight presented itself at Sho-wa Ku. There the river, indefinite as it had previously been, disappeared altogether, and the whole country was a turbulent muddy sea, bounded on the east by a range of hills, and to the north and south limitless. Under it lay all the fruits of the tireless industry and garden cultivation of a large and prosperous population, and the remorseless waters under the influence of a gale were rolling in muddy surges, “crested with tawny foam,” over the fast dissolving homes.

On this vast flood we embarked to shorten the distance, and sailed with three reefs in the sail for 13 miles over it, till we were brought up by an insurmountable obstacle in the shape of a tremendous rush of water where a bank had given way. There we were compelled to let go two anchors in the early afternoon. The wind had become foul, and the rain, which fell in torrents, was driven almost horizontally. Nothing that suggested human life was in sight. It might have been “the Deluge,” for the windows of heaven were opened. There were a muddy, rolling sea, and a black sky, dark with tremendous rain, and the foliage of trees with submerged trunks was alone suggestive of even vegetable life and of the villages which had been destroyed by the devouring waters.

In 13 miles just one habitation remained standing, a large, handsome brick house with entrance arch, quadrangle, curved roofs, large farm buildings, and many servants’ houses, some of which were toppling, and others were submerged up to their roofs. There was a lookout on the principal roof and he hailed us, but as there were several scows about, enough to save life, I disregarded him, and we sailed on into the tempestuous solitude where we anchored.

The day darkened slowly into night, the junk rolled with short plunging rolls, the rain fell more tremendously than ever, and the strong wind, sweeping through the rigging with a desolate screech, only just overpowered the clatter on the roof. I was ill. The seas we shipped drowned the charcoal, and it was impossible to make tea or arrowroot. The rain dripped everywhere through the roof. My lamp spluttered and went out and could not be relighted, bedding and clothing were soaked, my bed stood in the water, the noise was deafening.

Never in all my journeys have I felt so solitary. I realized that no other foreigner was travelling in Manchuria, that there was no help in illness, and that there was nothing to be done but lie there in saturated clothes till things took a turn for the better.

And so they did. By eight the next morning the scene was changed. The sky was blue and cloudless, there was a cool north wind, and the waste of water dimpled and glittered, the broken sparkle of its mimic waves suggesting the ocean after a destructive storm has become a calm. After sailing over broad blue water all day, and passing “islands” on which the luckier villages were still standing, towards evening we sailed into a village of large farmhouses and made fast to the window-bars of one of them, which, being of brick, had not suffered greatly. Eleven of the farms had disappeared, and others were in process of disappearing. The gardens, farmyards, and open spaces were under 5 feet of water, the surface of which was covered by a bubbly scum. The horses and cattle were in the rooms of the brick houses where many human beings had taken refuge. A raft made of farming implements ferried the people among the few remaining dwellings.