Mbherited from their see ‘the document aie 200 € 
le not to go voluntarily to the dread abode of the--Sea Dragon ; 
_ and admonishes them that their souls, should they perish in this 
~ manner, will sink into eternal perdition under the Nine Springs 
of Hades. “ Life has its natural limits, why nof await tie last 
_ day fixed by the decree of Heaven? Parents, wife, and children, 
will be seen gazing from the dione. bewailing your fate, and no 
condolence canbe offered them.” Condi ign’ punishment is threat- 
ened against all who should sepia the admonitions. 
The geological changes resultidgge: 3 reat tides are 
less than’ might be ex pected, owin degradation of the land 
by tidal and fluviatile action elsewh nike. Occasionally the land 
suffers the loss of. considerable portions of soil, but it is speedily 
replaced by the same power,.‘and is ever extending , by accumu- 
lations of detritus. There ha¥e however been some marke 
physical ehanges effected within the historic period, by the com- 
bined action of the Eagre, and of the two great rivers of China, 
_ Until about the eleventh century, there was a ledge of rocks 
_ projecting above the surface of the stream, near Hang-chau city, 
nown as Losah rock, a Sanscrit term employed by Budhists to 
express devilish. Herice that part of the Tssien-tang, taking its 
name from this obstruction to navigation, was once called the 
Devilish River. It was large enough to be a place of resort on 
certain festivals—religious and Thespian. A poet of that period 
playfully i inquires how it happened that the great oes whilst 
opening the river, omitted to perforate a rock a de in len Fi- 
nally it yielded to the attack of the fierce Eagre, and oe 
disappeared. 
A smaller rock measuring only 16 feet high, 14 long, and 6 
wide, disappeared 145 B.C. Two years after, it was brought into 
sight again by the same force which had removed it, when it 
disappeared altogether. 
am-pu, once a mart of coe importance, the port of 
- what, at one period at least, was the metropolis and capital of the 
| empire, mentioned by Mareo Polo as a extremely 
twenty-five miles from the city, frequented by all the ships, that 
bring merchandise from India, is now an insignificant walled vil- 
_ lage, in a of the receding of the sea, and the filling up 
of the bay. More than fifty miles distant, another city, Cha-pu, 
_ has Sprung up near the sea, which, for along time to come will be 
_ the port of Hang-chau; but the Yellow River and the Yang-tsz’ 
_ are surely, and not slowly, depositing silt, which will render it in 
its turn inaccessible. 
Chinese ingenuity has long been exerted, but with indifferent 
Success, in preserving their alluvial plain from the wasting action 
of the Eagre. The earliest mention of dykes is about the com- 
_Mencement of our era, when an engineer — T'sau, under- 
_ Sxconp Senizs, Vol. XX, No, 60—Nov, 1855. 
