62 MICKIE ON THE GULF OF PE-CHE-LI AND LEO-TUNG. [Feb. 13, I860, 



proof of the wonderful resources of China, he would mention that that 100,000 

 tons was transported from Tientsin to Tungchow (12 miles from Pekin) in 

 3892 river boats ! After a few more remarks upon the grain statistics, he 

 said that, in the opinion of Mr. Lindsay upon the commercial importance of 

 Hankow, he fully and heartily concurred. Having visited that great em- 

 porium, situated in the heart of China, and having navigated in a frigate that 

 magnificent stream the Yangstze, which cuts as it were the vast empire of 

 China into two, he might be pardoned for saying that that fine highway for the 

 shipping of England and America seemed as if Providence had expressly 

 created it to enable European energy and European civilization to be brought 

 to bear upon the most populous, the richest, and as yet least known nation of 

 the globe. 



Dr. Macgowan, of the United States, said, he had spent seventeen years in 

 the province of Chihkiang, and he had travelled over the adjacent provinces, 

 so that he had an intimate acquaintance with that part of the country. Although 

 Marco Polo had visited Hangchow, he believed he was the first foreigner who 

 had observed the remarkable phenomenon of the Egre, one of the most 

 striking physical wonders of the world. A person who is there at the period 

 of the autumnal equinox will, especially if there be an easterly wind, 

 witness it in all its grandeur. Imagine an estuary four or five miles in width, 

 the tide rising, and at first presenting the appearance of a white line, and 

 gradually approaching w4th the noise of thunder, and by degrees rising until 

 it becomes a wall four or five miles across, and 20 feet in height, coming up 

 almost with the velocity of a cannon-ball. The vast amount of craft belonging 

 to that great city — for it is one of the greatest cities in China — are obliged to 

 put out into the stream to meet the egre, because if they remained close in- 

 shore they would be crushed : when they meet it they all rise over the 

 advancing wave, and then for a moment they are in great tumult. The egre 

 is spent about ten miles above the provincial city of Hanchow. With reference 

 to the change in the course of the Yellow Kiver, he was the first foreigner to 

 call attention to the fact. He supposed that when in high antiquity that 

 river emptied into the Gulf of Chihli, through a delta, that the " backward 

 flow," alluded to in the 8hiiMng, was an egre, and that that tidal action 

 caused the first deflection of the stream into its late course. From some state- 

 ments found in the same ancient classic, there is reason to believe that other 

 physical changes have taken place in Chihli within the historic period, the 

 most noted being the submergence of a large tract of land. It is inexplicable 

 how such a change as the comparatively sudden shifting of that great stream 

 should have been accompanied with no perceptible increase of the waters 

 natural to that part of the Great Plain. It wouhi seem almost as if the stream 

 had permeated its bottom, finding a subterranean exit to the sea. This con- 

 jecture (published three years ago by Dr. Macgowan) has been supported by 

 the testimony of a recent Jesuit traveller. There is evidence, he adds, of a 

 subterranean communication between the continent and the Japanese islands, 

 afi"orded by earthquakes in that archipelago causing an elevation of the inland 

 waters of China ; and it is doubtless through submarine or subfluviatile fissures 

 of the adjacent region that the water is derived which is so largely ejected 

 from the volcanoes of Japan. Chinese records mention the temporary dis- 

 appearance of the Tsien-tang and other streams. There is another singular 

 feature characteristic of the turbid Hwang — its occasional limpidity, being on 

 an average j)erhaps once in two hundred years perfectly clear for a day 

 or two. 



Mr. J. Crawfurd, f.r.g.s., criticised at some length the views of Mr. 

 Oliphant and Captain Sherard Osborn respecting the means of transporting 

 and provisioning an army of 30,000 troops on a march upon Pekin. 



