A river whose regimen was liable to such vast changes was necessarily a constant source of danger, insomuch that the Emperor Kia-K’ing in his will speaks of it as having been “from the remotest ages China’s sorrow.”  Some idea of the enormous works maintained for the control of the river may be obtained from the following description of their character on the north bank, some distance to the west of Kai-fung fu: 

“In a village, apparently bounded by an earthen wall as large as that of the Tartar city of Peking, was reached the first of the outworks erected to resist the Hwang-Ho, and on arriving at the top that river and the gigantic earthworks rendered necessary by its outbreaks burst on the view.  On a level with the spot on which I was standing stretched a series of embankments, each one about 70 feet high, and of breadth sufficient for four railway trucks to run abreast on them.  The mode of their arrangement was on this wise:  one long bank ran parallel to the direction of the stream; half a mile distant from it ran a similar one; these two embankments were then connected by another series exactly similar in size, height, and breadth, and running at right angles to them right down to the edge of the water.”

In 1851, the Hwang-Ho burst its northern embankment nearly 30 miles east of Kai-fung fu; the floods of the two following years enlarged the breach; and in 1853 the river, after six centuries, resumed the ancient direction of its discharge into the Gulf of Chih-li.  Soon after leaving its late channel, it at present spreads, without defined banks, over the very low lands of South-Western Shan-tung, till it reaches the Great Canal, and then enters the Ta-t’sing channel, passing north of T’si-nan to the sea.  The old channel crossed by Polo in the present journey is quite deserted.  The greater part of the bed is there cultivated; it is dotted with numerous villages; and the vast trading town of Tsing-kiang pu was in 1868 extending so rapidly from the southern bank that a traveller in that year says he expected that in two years it would reach the northern bank.

The same change has destroyed the Grand Canal as a navigable channel for many miles south of Lin-t’sing chau. (J.R.G.S. XXVIII. 294-295; Escayrac de Lauture, Mem. sur la Chine; Cathay, p. 125; Reports of Journeys in China, etc. [by Consuls Alabaster, Oxenham, etc., Parl.  Blue Book], 1869, pp. 4-5, 14; Mr. Elias in J.R.G.S. XL. p. 1 seqq.)

[Since the exploration of the Hwang-Ho in 1868 by Mr. Ney Elias and by Mr. H.G.  Hollingworth, an inspection of this river was made in 1889 and a report published in 1891 by the Dutch Engineers J.G.W.  Fijnje van Salverda, Captain P.G. van Schermbeek and A. Visser, for the improvement of the Yellow River.—­H.C.]

NOTE 3.—­Coiganju will be noticed below. Caiju does not seem to be traceable, having probably been carried away by the changes in the river.  But it would seem to have been at the mouth of the canal on the north side of the Hwang-Ho, and the name is the same as that given below (ch. lxxii.) to the town (Kwachau) occupying the corresponding position on the Kiang.