nearly at the northern limit of Shen-hsî, when it turns directly south, and flowing for 500 miles between that province and Shan-hsî, comes to the edge of the Great Plain, and pursues an eastward course. The Chiang on the contrary flows south from Batang, between Sze-ch'wan and Yun-nan, till it reaches the southern limit of the former province. Then it turns north, and holds its way eastward through Sze-ch'wan and the other intervening provinces till it enters the ocean in lat. 32°. The Ho does not pursue so regular a course. Its direction indeed from the edge of the plain is eastwards, but in the course of time it has ever and anon changed its channel. Chinese history opens, in the Shu King, in the 24th century B.C., with an account of one of its inundations, described in terms which have suggested to some students the Noachian deluge, and the labours on it of the Great Yü. The terrible calamities caused by it so often have procured for it the name of China's Sorrow.' So recently as 1887 it burst its southern bank near Chang Châu, and poured its mighty flood, with hideous devastation and the destruction of millions of lives, into the populous province of Ho-nan. It is now the task of the Manchû rulers of the empire to remedy this disaster, and regulate the terrible river for the future. Both the Ho and the Chiang must have a course of more than 3000 miles. These two rivers are incomparably the greatest in China, but there are many others which would elsewhere be accounted great. And among those rivers we may well account the Grand Canal, intended to connect the northern and southern parts of the empire by an easy water communication; and this it did when it was in good order, extending from Peking to Hang-châu in Cheh-chiang, a distance of more than 600 miles. The glory of making this canal is due to Kublâi, the first sovereign of the Yuan dynasty, of whom Marco Polo says: 'He has caused a water communication to be made in the shape of a wide and deep channel dug between stream and stream, between lake and lake, forming as it were a great river on which large vessels can ply.' Steam communication all along the eastern seaboard from Canton to. T'ien-tsin has very much superseded its use, and portions of it are now in bad condition, but as a truly imperial achievement it continues to be a grand memorial of Kublâi. Even Barrow wrote of it in 1806: In point of magnitude, our most extensive inland navigation in England can no more be compared to the grand trunk that intersects China than a park or garden fish-pond to the great lake of Winandermere.

After the Grand Canal a few sentences may be given to the Great Wall, another vast achievement of human labour, especially as in 1887 there were paragraphs in many of our newspapers representing its existence as merely a myth. Not so useful as the canal, and having failed to answer the purpose for which it was intended-to be a defence against the incursions of the northern tribes, there it still stands, while the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus in our own country have crumbled to the ground, and their course can only be indistinctly traced here and there. It was in 214 B.C. that Shih Hwang Ti determined to erect a grand barrier all along the north of his vast empire. The wall commences at the Shan-hâi Pass (40° N. lat., 119° 50' E. long.), where it was visited by a squadron of Her Majesty's vessels of war in 1839, and was seen, as Lord Jocelyn describes it, 'scaling the precipices, and topping the craggy hills of the country.' From this point it is carried westwards till it terminates at the Chia-yü barrier gate, the road through which leads to the Western Regions.' Its length in a straight line would be 1255 miles, but, if measured along its sinuosities, this distance must be increased

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to 1500. It is not built so grandly in its western portions after it has met the Ho River, nor should it be supposed that to the east of this point it is all solid masonry. It is formed by two strong retaining walls of brick, rising from granite foundations, the space between being filled up with stones and earth. The breadth of it at the base is about 25 feet, at the top 15, and the height varies from 15 to 30 feet. The surface at the top was covered with bricks, and is now overgrown with grass. What foreigners go to visit from Peking is merely a loop-wall of later formation, inclosing portions of Chih-li and Shanhsî.

The lakes are very many, but not on so great a scale as the rivers. It will be sufficient to mention three-the T'ung-ting Hû, the largest, having a circumference of 220 miles, and entering into the names of the provinces Hû-pei and Hu-nan; the Po-yang Hû, in the north of Chiang-hsî, the seat of the manufactories of the best porcelain; and the T'ai Hu, partly in Chiang-sú and partly in Chehchiang, famous for its romantic scenery and numerous islets.

The country is rich in the products necessary for the support and comfort of the people, and for the adornment of their civilisation. There is in it every variety of climate; but the average temperature is lower than in any other country in the same latitude. The Chinese themselves consider Kwangtung, Kwang-hsî, and Yun-nan to be less healthy than the other provinces; but foreigners using proper precautions may enjoy their life in every province.

Wheat, barley, maize, millet, and other cereals are chiefly cultivated in the northern regions, and rice in the southern. The writer once had a bag of oatmeal sent to him from Kalgan, north of the loopwall mentioned above. Culinary or kitchen herbs, mushrooms, and aquatic vegetables, with ginger and a variety of other condiments, are everywhere produced and largely used. From Formosa there comes sugar, and the cane thrives also in the southern provinces. Oranges, pummeloes, lichis, pomegranates, peaches, plantains, pine-apples, mangoes, grapes, and many other fruits and nuts, are supplied in most markets. Tea is noted below. Opium has been increasingly grown of late within the country. The Chinese are emphatically an agricultural people. From time immemorial the sovereign has initiated the year, which begins with the spring, by turning over a few furrows in the sacred field;' and in each province the highest authority performs a similar ceremony-to impress on the people the importance of husbandry. The hoe holds the place of our spade; the plough retains its primitive simplicity; irrigation is assiduously and skilfully employed. The tsing, or well, which was anciently in the centre of the plots of land assigned to the families which cultivated them, is still seen in the north; and where the canal or river-beds are below the level of the fields much ingenuity is displayed in raising the water to them by wheels and scoops. No other people show such a sense of the value of human ordure as manure. Nothing that comes from man or beast is allowed to be lost. All is preserved and prepared for use. This does not conduce to the cleanliness of the towns or the fragrancy of the country; but it largely increases the productiveness of the field and the garden.

The horse, the ox, the sheep, the fowl, the dog, the pig; These are the six animals which men breed for food, are well-known lines; but we do not now hear of horses being eaten; and though dogs are to be seen in baskets in the markets, or cut up on the stalls, they are such as have been carefully fed. Fowls, including ducks and geese, are abundantly bred and consumed; of ducks, immense numbers