Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1894 — THE GRAND CAJNAL. [ARTICLE]

THE GRAND CAJNAL.

A GLANCE AT CHINA’S GREAT WATERWAY. It Runs Through a Vast and Thlokfg Populated Country and Taps Soma of tho Biggest Cities in the World. I write this letter at Chinkiang. a walled city on the banks of the Yangtze River, says Frank G. Carpenter in a letter from China. It is just about 150 miles from the seacoast, and is at the point where the grand canal crosses the Yangtse. This canal is one of the great wonders of the world. It is now in bad repair, and a large part of it is going to ruln. But it has been one of the great, waterways of the world, and it extends from Peking south to Hang Chow, running through the great plain from north to middle China, a distance about as great as that between New York and Chicago. It cuts its way through a territory containing 170,000.000 people, or nearly three times as many as the whole United States, and it taps some of the biggest cities of the world. Peking, where it finishes its couree at the palace, not far from the American Legation, is a city of more than 1,000,000 people. Tientsin, below this about eighty miles, is still larger, and as it runs further south, the canal is dotted with walled cities and great towns all along its course to the Yangtse Rivor. Chinkiang is about as big as Minneapolis. Yangehow, the next big eiifljr on the canal south of herav contains, I am told, a half million of people, and Soochou and Hangchow each have something like threequarters of a million souls. At every thirty miles ulong the course of the canal there is a walled city, containing many times ten thousand people, and the country back of it is a garden, spotted with clumps o* trees, each clump shading a Chinese village. The canal at Chinkiang cuts right, around the city, forming the island upon which the main part of it is located. It runs from her# northward for !180 miles without a. lock, but above tills, I am told, thereare numerous sluices and locks, and In some places the water Is carried through the country on great stone embankments, twenty and more feet high, and the stream tit some of these places is fully ‘2OO fueV wide. It lias stone floodgates,, managed by soldiers, and It is liereand there fed by creeks and rivers. At one point a river was conducted; into it in times past, and the Chinese say that 800,000 men wero employed for seven months in turning the water of this stream. It cuts tlte Yellow River, and it is below thin that the stone embankments above spoken of are located. The parte which I have seen are those wliicU run near here, through the Yangtse Valley, and those about Tientsin and Peking. Here the canal fs more like a great ditch than anything else, amt there is now a little army of men employed in keeping It in repair. Us was in existence more than 1,0001 years ago, and Kublai Kuhn laid out. the line upon which it now runs. The chief use for the canal in time* past has been that of a trade artery from the north to the south. It tups* by its connecting canals and riveew. every part of the great plain, and it is used for tho transportation of the tribute rice to Peking. The government taxes of Chins ax® to a large extent collected In kind., and every year the farmers send, about 188,000,000 pounds of rice from* hero to Peking for the Einperor and his officials. At Nanking I saw acres, of groat barns which were filled wltli. this rice awaiting shipment, and. every town along the canal hse-ftte-government barns. Just now. therice is being taken to the uortti. Of.' late much of it goes by aea, but ai vast deal is still sent by the Grand Cunal, and ut every town there are hundreds of craft of eTery kind, and these government junks sometimes block the canal for days. Hundreds of men are employed in towing amA pulling the boats, and at place* they are dragged along by means of capstans. The canal winds about like ». river in places, and navigation, through it is so slow that some of these rice boats have started in April, during the past few years and have not arrived In Pekin until September. Parts of the canal are closed t«. traffic except during the carrying ot the tribute rice, and the condition off. it to-day is such that it will hardly be used again as the great waterway which it has been in the past. 1,5? Hung Chung has asked the Bmperow to allow him to build a railroad along it from Tientsin to Chinkiang, and this will eventually be done^