[Sir J.F.  Davis writes:  “From Sootsien Hien to the point of junction with the Yellow River, a length of about fifty miles, that great stream and the canal run nearly parallel with each other, at an average distance of four or five miles, and sometimes much nearer.” (Sketches of China, I. p. 265.)—­H.C.]

[Illustration:  Sketch Map, exhibiting the VARIATIONS of the TWO GREAT RIVERS OF CHINA Within the Period of History]

NOTE 2.—­We have again arrived on the banks of the Hwang-Ho, which was crossed higher up on our traveller’s route to Karajang.

No accounts, since China became known to modern Europe, attribute to the Hwang-Ho the great utility for navigation which Polo here and elsewhere ascribes to it.  Indeed, we are told that its current is so rapid that its navigation is scarcely practicable, and the only traffic of the kind that we hear of is a transport of coal in Shan-si for a certain distance down stream.  This rapidity also, bringing down vast quantities of soil, has so raised the bed that in recent times the tide has not entered the river, as it probably did in our traveller’s time, when, as it would appear from his account, seagoing craft used to ascend to the ferry north of Hwai-ngan fu, or thereabouts.  Another indication of change is his statement that the passage just mentioned was only one day’s journey from the sea, whereas it is now about 50 miles in a direct line.  But the river has of late years undergone changes much more material.

In the remotest times of which the Chinese have any record, the Hwang-Ho discharged its waters into the Gulf of Chih-li, by two branches, the most northerly of which appears to have followed the present course of the Pei-ho below Tien-tsing.  In the time of the Shang Dynasty (ending B.C. 1078) a branch more southerly than either of the above flowed towards T’si-ning, and combined with the T’si River, which flowed by T’si-nan fu, the same in fact that was till recently called the Ta-t’sing.  In the time of Confucius we first hear of a branch being thrown off south-east towards the Hwai, flowing north of Hwai-ngan, in fact towards the embouchure which our maps still display as that of the Hwang-Ho.  But, about the 3rd and 4th centuries of our era, the river discharged exclusively by the T’si; and up to the Mongol age, or nearly so, the mass of the waters of this great river continued to flow into the Gulf of Chih-li.  They then changed their course bodily towards the Hwai, and followed that general direction to the sea; this they had adopted before the time of our traveller, and they retained it till a very recent period.  The mass of Shan-tung thus forms a mountainous island rising out of the vast alluvium of the Hwang-Ho, whose discharge into the sea has alternated between the north and the south of that mountainous tract. (See Map opposite.)

During the reign of the last Mongol emperor, a project was adopted for restoring the Hwang-Ho to its former channel, discharging into the Gulf of Chih-li; and discontents connected with this scheme promoted the movement for the expulsion of the dynasty (1368).