"If you look at the map, you will see that there are numerous chains of mountains in the countries lying west of China, especially in Tibet, while China proper has but few of them. The land generally slopes from the several ranges to the sea, but I will not perplex you with the names of them. The rivers, of course, flow from the mountains, and you can see that they have space for a long course. They are generally called ho in the north, and chiang or kiang in the south. The Ho, Hoang-ho, or Yellow River, and the Chiang, known to us as the Yang-tsze-Chiang, must be over three thousand miles long. I will not follow them from source to mouth. Canton, or Choo-Chiang River, which means Pearl River, is also a very large stream. All these waterways, you notice on the map, have a general course from west to east. All of them are navigable, though the Hoang-ho is less so than the Yang-tsze-Chiang, the 'most beloved' of the Chinese; for its counterpart in the north is a turbid stream, so tricky that it changed its course in 1853 so that its mouth is now about two hundred and fifty miles north of where it was before that date."
Mr. Gaskette pointed out the former course, which he had indicated by double dotted lines, and that of the present course to the Gulf of Pe-chi-li.
"Chinese history begins twenty-four hundred years before our era, when the first human kings of Egypt were on the throne, with the narrative of a tremendous inundation, which some have identified as that of the Flood in the Old Testament. But the floods did not cease with that event, for several others have followed. As late as 1887, only half a dozen years ago, the treacherous Hoang-ho broke loose, and poured its waters into the populous province of Honan, tearing everything to pieces and destroying millions of lives. There have been so many of these floods that they have given the great river the name of 'China's Sorrow.' But the Manchu rulers are repairing damages, and providing against such disasters in the future.
"I have to speak next about the Grand Canal and the Great Wall; but I will defer it for half an hour for a recess, for I think you must be tired of the dry details I have been giving you," said the professor, as he stepped down from the rostrum.
The company then promenaded the deck for the time indicated.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE CONTINUATION OF THE LECTURE
A walk of half an hour had freshened up the minds and bodies of the passengers, and they took their places on the promenade for the continuation of the lecture. The professor had been to his stateroom, and returned with additional notes.
"Dr. Legge quotes Marco Polo, the greatest traveller of the Middle Ages, who visited China in the thirteenth century," the speaker began, taking a paper from the table, and reading as follows in regard to the Grand Canal: "'Kublâi caused a water communication to be made in the shape of a wide and deep channel dug between stream and stream, between lake and lake, forming as it were a great river on which large vessels can ply.' Kublâi was the first sovereign of one of the old dynasties.