The rivers of China are her glory, and no country can compare with her for natural facilities of inland navigation. The people themselves consider that portion of geography relating to their rivers as the most interesting, and give it the greatest attention. The four largest rivers in the empire are the Yellow River, the Yangtsz’, the Amur, and the Tarim; the Yaru-tsangbu also runs more than a thousand miles within its borders.
THE YELLOW RIVER.
The Hwang ho, or ‘Yellow River,’ rises in the plain of Odontala, called in Chinese Sing-suh hai, or ‘Starry Sea,’ from the numerous springs or lakelets found there between the Shuga and Bayan-kara Mountains, in lat. 35⅓°, and about long. 96° E., and not a hundred miles from the Yangtsz’. The Chinese popularly believe that the Yellow River runs underground from Lob-nor to Sing-suh hai. In this region are two lakes—the Dzaring and Oling, which are its fountains; and its course is very crooked after it leaves them. It turns first south 30 miles, then east 160, then nearly west about 120, winding through gorges of the Kwănlun; the river then flows north-east and east to Lanchau in Kansuh, having gone about 700 miles in its devious line. From Lanchau it turns northward along the Great Wall for 430 miles, till deflected eastward by the Ín shan, on the edge of the plateau, and incloses the country of the Ortous Mongols within this great bend. A spur of the Peh ling forces it south, about long. 110° E., between Shansí and Shensí, for some 500 miles, till it enters the Great Plain, having run 1,130 miles from Lanchau. Through this loess region it becomes tinged with the soil which imparts both color and name to it. At the northern bend it separates in several small lakes and branches, and during this part of its course, for more than 500 miles, receives not a single stream of any size, while it is still so rapid, in descending from the plateau, as to demand much care when crossing it by boats. At the south-western corner of Shansí this river meets its largest tributary, the Wei, which comes in from the westward after a course of 400 miles, and is more available as a navigable stream than any other of the affluents. The area of the whole basin is less than that of the Yangtsz’, and may be estimated at about 475,000 square miles; though the source of this stream is only 1,290 miles in a direct line from its mouth, its numerous windings prolong its course to nearly double that distance.
The great differences of level in winter and summer have always made this river nearly useless, except as a drain; while the effect of the long-continued deposit of silt along its lower level course has finally choked the mouth altogether. This remarkable result has been hastened, no doubt, by the dikes built along the banks to the east of Kaifung, which thus forced the floods to fill up the channel, and pushed the waters back over 500 miles to Honan-fu. Here the land is low, and the refluent waters gradually worked their way through marshes and creeks into the river Wei on the north bank, and thus found a north-east channel into the Canal and the Ta-tsing River, till they reached the Gulf of Pechele. A small part of these floods have perhaps gone south into the head-waters of the river Hwai, and thence into Hung-tsih Lake; but that lake has shrivelled, like its great feeder, and all its waters flow into the Yangtsz’. The history of the Yellow River furnishes a conclusive argument against diking a river’s banks to restrain its floods. It has now reverted to the channel it occupied about fourteen centuries ago.[10]
THE YANGTSZ’ KIANG.
Far more tranquil and useful is its rival, the Yangtsz’ kiang, called also simply Kiang or Ta kiang, the ‘River,’ or ‘Great River.’ It is often erroneously named on western maps, Kyang Ku, which merely means ‘mouth of the river.’ The sources of the Kiang are in the Tangla Mountains and the Kwănlun range, and are placed on native maps in three streams flowing from the southern side of the Bayan-kara. This has been partly confirmed by Col. Prejevalsky. In January, 1873, he reached the Murui-ussu (Tortuous River) in lat. 35°, long. 94°, at its junction with the Napchitai, the northern of the three branches, and found it 750 feet wide at that season. In spring, the river’s bed there is filled up a mile wide. Its course thence is south-east, receiving three other streams, all of which may be considered as its head-waters. All their channels are over ten thousand feet above the sea, but the ranges near them are under the snow-line. There is no authentic account of its course from this union till it joins the Yalung kiang in Sz’chuen, a distance of nearly 1,300 miles; but Chinese maps indicate a south-easterly direction through the gorges of the Yun ling, till it bursts out from the mountains in lat. 26° N., where it turns north-east. During much of this distance it bears the name of the Po-lai-tsz’. The Yalung River rises very near the Yellow River, and runs parallel with the Kiang in a valley further east, flowing upwards of 600 miles before they join. Great rafts of timber are floated down both these streams, for sale at the towns further east, but no large boats are seen on them before they leave the mountains. The town of Batang, in Sz’chuen, on the road from H’lassa, is the first large place on the river. The main trunk is called Kin sha kiang (i.e., Golden-sand River), until it receives the Yalung in the southern part of Sz’chuen, which the Chinese there regard as the principal stream of the two. Beyond the junction, the united river is called Ta kiang as far as Wuchang, in Hupeh, beyond which the people know it also as the Chang kiang, or ‘Long River.’ They do not often call it Yangtsz’, which is properly applied only to the reach from Nanking out to sea, which lay within the old region of Yangchau. This name has been erroneously written in Chinese, and thence translated ‘Son of the Ocean.’ The French often call it the Fleuve Bleu, but the Chinese have no such name. Its general course from Wuchang is easterly, receiving various tributaries on both shores, until it discharges its waters at Tsungming Island, by two mouths, in lat. 32° N., more than 1,850 miles from its mouth in a direct line, but flowing nearly 3,000 miles in all its windings.[11]
One of the largest and most useful of its tributaries in its lower course is the Kan kiang in Kiangsí, which empties through the Poyang lake, and continues the transverse communication from north to south, connecting with the Grand Canal. The Tungting lake receives the Siang and Yuen, which drain the northern sides of the Nan ling in Hunan; and west of them is the Kungtan or Wu, which comes in with its surplus waters from Kweichau. These are on the south; the Han in Hupeh, and the Kialing, Min, and Loh in Sz’chuen, are the main affluents on the north, contributing the drainage south of the Peh ling. The Grand Canal comes in opposite Chinkiang, and from thence the deep channel, able to carry the largest men-of-war on its bosom, finds its way to the Pacific. No two rivers can be more unlike in their general features than these two mighty streams. While the Yellow River is unsteady, the Yangtsz’ is uniform and deep in its lower course, and available for rafts from Batang in the western confines of Sz’chuen, and for boats from beyond Tungchuen in Yunnan, more than 1,700 miles from its mouth. Its great body and depth afford ample room for ocean steam-ships 200 miles, as far as Nanking, where in some places no bottom could be found at twenty fathoms, while the banks are not so low as to be often injured by the freshets, even when the flood is over thirty feet. At Pingshan above Süchau in Sz’chuen, 1,550 miles from its mouth, Blakiston reckons the river to be 1,500 feet above tide-water, which gives an average fall of 12 inches to a geographical mile; the inclination is increased to 19 inches in some portions, and it is this force which carries the silt of this stream out to sea, but which is wanting in the Yellow River. The fall of the Yangtsz’ is nearly double that of the Nile and Amazon, and half that of the Mississippi. The amount of water discharged is estimated at 500,000 cubic feet a second at Íchang, about 700 miles up, and it may reasonably be concluded that at Tsungming it discharges in times of flood a million cubic feet per second. Barrow calculated the discharge of the Yellow River in 1798 to be 11,616 cubic feet per second, when the current ran seven miles an hour. No river in the world exceeds the Yangtsz’ for arrangement of subsidiary streams, which render the whole basin accessible as far as the Yalung. When a ship-canal has been dug around the gorges and rapids between Íchang and Kwei, steam-vessels can ascend nearly two thousand miles. The area of its basin is estimated at 548,000 square miles; and from its central course, and the number of provinces through which it passes, it has been termed the Girdle of China; while for its size, perennial and ample supply of water, and accessibility for navigation, it ranks with the great rivers of the world.[12]
Besides these two notable rivers, numerous others empty into the ocean along the coast from Hainan to the Amur, three of which drain large tracts of country, and afford access to many populous cities and districts. The third basin is that south of the Nan ling to the ocean; it is drained chiefly by the Chu kiang, and its form is much less regular than those of the Yellow River and Yangtsz’. The Chu kiang or Pearl River, like most of the rivers in China, has many names during its course, and is formed by three principal branches, respectively called East, North, and West rivers, according to the quarter from whence they come. The last is by far the largest, and all of them are navigable most of their length. They disembogue together at Canton, and drain a region of not much less than 130,000 square miles, being all the country east of the Yun ling and south of the Nan ling ranges. The rivers in Yunnan, for the most part, empty into the Salween, Saigon, Meikon, and other streams in Cochinchina. The Min, which flows by Fuhchau, the Tsih, upon which Ningpo lies, the Tsientang, leading up to Hangchau, and the Pei ho, or White River, emptying into the Gulf of Pechele, are the most considerable among these lesser outlets in the provinces; while the Liau ho and Yahluh kiang, discharging into the Gulf of Liautung, are the only two that deserve mention in Southern Manchuria. The difference between the number of river-mouths cutting the Chinese coast and that of the United States is very striking, resulting from the different direction of the mountain chains in the interior.
LAKES OF CHINA.
The lakes of China are comparatively few and small; all those in the provinces of any size lie within the Plain, and are connected with the two great rivers. The largest is the Tungting in Hunan, about 220 miles in circumference, through which the waters of the Siang and Yuen rivers flow, and fill its channels and beds according to the season; it is now the silted-up bed of a former inland sea in Hupeh, lying on both sides of the Yangtsz’, and through which countless lakes, creeks, and canals form a navigable network between that river and the Han. The lake receives the silt as the tributaries flow on through it, and discharge themselves along the deep outlet near Yohchau; this depression altogether is about 200 miles long and 80 broad. About 320 miles eastward lies the Poyang Lake in Kiangsí, which also discharges the surplus waters of the Kan into the Yangtsz’. It is nearly 90 miles long, and about 20 in breadth, inclosing within its bosom many beautiful and populous islets. The scenery around this lake is highly picturesque, and its trade and fisheries are more important than those of the Tungting. The Yangtsz’ receives the waters of several other lakes as it approaches the ocean, the largest of which are the Ta hu or ‘Great Lake’ near Suchau, and the Tsau hu, lying on the northern bank, between Nganking and Nanking; both these lakes join the river by navigable streams, and the former is connected with the ocean by more than one channel.