168 WITH BOAT AND GUN IN THE YANGTZE VALLEY. 



to the landscape. During the latter part of this southerly course the hills, in which the 

 famous Hsihu (West Lake) is framed, are in view ahead. 



The couplet which serves as motto for this chapter describes Hangchow a thousand 

 years ago as so placed that municipal officers " lean on the green hills and are pillowed on 

 the lake." Another author describes the city as "girdled by the river." This river is the 

 Ts'ient'ang which, rising in the hills on the Keangsi frontier, divides Chehkeang into the 

 "eight upper prefectures and the three lower:" so-called because they lie respectively on 

 the right or southern, and the left or northern banks of the river. It is chiefly known to 

 foreigners for its swift tides, and the volume and violence of the "bore" which occurs 

 especially at the equinoxes. 



The green hills are the picturesque group which surround on all sides but one the 

 pretty lake, the theme of Chinese verse for a thousand years. They belong to the mountain- 

 system which, according to Dr. Williams, " after passing through Kweichow and Hunan 

 and dividing Kwangtung and Fuhkien from Keangsi and Chehkeang, bends north- east till 

 it reaches the sea opposite Chusan." 



To the best of the writer's knowledge these hills cover the greater part of Chehkeang 

 so that nowhere to the west and south of Hangchow or on the right bank of the Ts'ient'ang 

 are they ever out of sight. The basins of the Yung river at Ningpo, of the Tsaongo which 

 drains the department of Shaohsing, and of the Ts'ient'ang itself, all contain wide and 

 fertile plains; but it is only in the east of the province around Kiahsing, that one finds 

 oneself in the midst of a vast level, with no elevation to break the horizon loftier than 

 a pagoda-tower or some group of pine or camphor trees. Bingyow, mentioned above, 

 is we believe on the margin of a hilly region that stretches away to the very frontier of 

 Anhuei. 



Hangchow, comparatively speaking, is not an ancient city. The topographies place 

 its foundation after the sixth century. They record that its site was once swept by the sea, 

 the estuary probably of the Yangtze ; and it was not till that huge current sought a more 

 northerly channel that, first a village of fishermen and saltboilers, and ultimately a city, 

 was built at the foot of the hills which overlook the Ts'ient'ang and the lake on either hand, 

 on ground left dry by the receding river. During the confusion that prevailed at the close 

 of the ninth and beginning of the tenth centuries, Ts'ien K'iao, as tradition has it, a chief of 

 salt-smugglers, acquired power, which, confirmed to him by Imperial grant, he wielded as a 

 feudal prince (wang) over a wide region having Hangchow for its capital. His "fief" 

 included Soochow on the north and Shaohsing on the south; and was ruled by the house of 

 Ts'ien from 907 A.D. till, about 70 years later, his grandson surrendered it to the first 

 Emperor of the great Sung dynasty, by that time firmly seated at Peking. Ts'ien Wang is 

 said to have been the first to contend successfully with the destructive tides of the river 

 which bears his name. He fought his enemy with the weapon of magic, firing a volley of 

 crossbow-bolts into the threatening " bore," and by vigorous engineering at the same time. 

 The massive stone-dykes which stand now east of the city, perhaps three miles from high- 

 water mark, may possibly date back to his day. It is not certain, however, that the river's 

 name Ts'ient'ang (Dyke of Ts'ien) is really a memorial of the prince : since the name was 

 applied to the site of Hangchow some four hundred years before he flourished 



