The history of the Hwang ho is one of disastrous floods and shiftings of its course, which have occurred many times in the years since before the time of the Great Yu, who perhaps began the works perpetuated today.  Between 1300 A. D. and 1852 the Hwang ho emptied into the Yellow Sea south of the highlands of Shantung, but in that year, when in unusual flood, it broke through the north levees and finally took its present course, emptying again into the Gulf of Chihli, some three hundred miles further north.  Some of these shiftings of course of the Hwang ho and of the Yangtse kiang are indicated in dotted lines on the sketch map, Fig. 53, where it may he seen that the Hwang ho during 146 years, poured its waters into the sea as far north as Tientsin, through the mouth of the Pei ho, four hundred miles to the northward of its mouth in 1852.

This mighty river is said to carry at low stage, past the city of Tsinan in Shantung, no less than 4,000 cubic yards of water per second, and three times this volume when running at flood.  This is water sufficient to inundate thirty-three square miles of level country ten feet deep in twenty-four hours.  What must be said of the mental status of a people who for forty centuries have measured their strength against such a Titan racing past their homes above the level of their fields, confined only between walls of their own construction?  While they have not always succeeded in controlling the river, they have never failed to try again.  In 1877 this river broke its banks, inundating a vast. area, bringing death to a million people.  Again, as late as 1898, fifteen hundred villages to the northeast of Tsinan and a much larger area to the southwest of the same city were devastated by it, and it is such events as these which have won for the river the names “China’s Sorrow,” “The Ungovernable” and “The Scourge of the Sons of Han.”

The building of the Grand Canal appears to have been a comparatively recent event in Chinese history.  The middle section, between the Yangtse and Tsingkiangpu, is said to have been constructed about the sixth century B. C.; the southern section, between Chingkiang and Hangchow, during the years 605 to 617 A. D.; but the northern section, from the channel of the Hwang ho deserted in 1852, to Tientsin, was not built until the years 1280-1283.

While this canal has been called by the Chinese Yu ho (Imperial river), Yun ho (Transport river) or Yunliang ho (Tribute bearing river) and while it has connected the great rivers coming down from the far interior into a great water-transport system, this feature of construction may have been but a by-product of the great dominating purpose which led to the vast internal improvements in the form of canals, dikes, levees and impounding reservoirs so widely scattered, so fully developed and so effectively utilized.  Rather the master purpose must have been maintenance for the increasing flood of humanity.  And I am willing to grant to the Great Yu, with his finger on the pulse of the nation, the power to project his vision four thousand years into the future of his race and to formulate some of the measures which might he inaugurated to grow with the years and make certain perpetual maintenance for those to follow.