| Show ato f for ate pap paper 2000 MILES ON CHINESE RIVERS copyrighted by bv frank Q G carpenter Oa menter 1896 1895 APAN PAN IT IS said will de m a n d in gold from china in addition to the territory which is to be granted as the price of peace it is a question in minds of a all I 1 I 1 who know anything concerning the chinese r government as to how it will be able to collect this vast sum it will probably get the money in the first place mace iti in the shape of a foreign loan aria and the customs will be mortgaged to pay the interest at present china has perhaps perhaps the lowest taxes in the wor world and the farmers pay less on their lands than they do in any ol of the countries in europe the increasing of such taxes would create a revolution the only way that the government can raise money will be through levying duties on imports and exports th s will nil fill the rivers with tax gatherers and china will be honeycombed with a network of official robbers every officer will put some of the receipts in his own pocket and prices of all kinds will rise the rivers ate are the highways of china the country is said to have 4 roads but it has none that are good I 1 cid and the rivers and the canals ro form m the chief means of comm communication there is no land on the globe which is better watered there are provinces in china as big as new york which are cut up by canals like holland and in which you can visit every mans house by bv b at you can travel a distance longer than a journey around the world on the chinese interior waterways and the nile has its equals in the kiang and hoang tio rio each of these rivers carries as much silt as the nile every year and the sea is yel 1 low for from thirty to fifty miles mile on each side of their mouths at the mouth of the yingtse kiang the water is as thick as pea soup and all along the mighty river men are seen dipping it up pouring i n g it into ditches in order that it may be carried off and spread over the land 2000 MILES OV OF CHINESE RIVERS I 1 have traveled more than 2000 miles u upon on these wonderful rivers of china the phe scenes along their banks are like those of no other streams of the world irrigation goes on everywhere and the fertilizing material which they contain rejuvenates the chinese soil as the nile dots docs that of egypt the great plain of china which by the way is the most thickly populated part of the empire which has been built up from the sea by the chinese rivers it runs along the pac fie coast for about miles and it is irom from to miles wide it is one ot of the richest plains in the world and its soils are mixed with salts and the evidences of decayed vegetation it comes from the loess regon region in the ane far interior of china this region is a vast territory covered with a yellow how 1 earth about 1000 feet deep this is soil is very fine and when a stream flows into it it seems to split open vertically and the rivers which run through it pass gorges of suna sana soo feet deep from time to time the yellow soil splits spins on off in sheets irom from the sides of these gorges and it is carried down to the sea during the hot season the winds blow through this loess region and carry the dust over china this aids in its fertilization the silts car ned down by the bivers fivers rivers to the sea is so great that the land every year inches zoo loo feet above the sea and this has been going on lor for ages near anang hat hai there is a large island which has been built up by the Yang yangtze te kiang and the land north ol of this is to a great extent the product ot of hoagg ho and the the yingtse kiang river is said to be miles long the hoang ho risca in thabet within zoo miles of the mouth ot of the yingtse Yang tse and it is almost of the same length it flows as far as irom from new york to denver before it gets into a large branch and by the time it has reacted the sea it has gone as far as from new york to san francisco it is only navigated by small boats and a giedt part of its course is through the great plain it has vast embankments to keep it in its course every ear or so a great flood comes and hundreds ot of thousands and sometimes somei imes millions ol of people bre swallowed up by it when I 1 first visited china I 1 arrived just after one ot of these big floods about twenty million peo pe p e were ruined by the river and millions had been ar drowned owned during my trip of last year I 1 canei up the to tien tsin ism and saw he evidences of the great flood ot of the year previous this covered the plains pains surrounding it ruined hundreds of villages and at one time it seemed as though it would endanger the great city ot li hung chang you know contains a million people right below tien tsin I 1 saw thousands of graves winch which had been washed out by the flod the cuffins coffins were lying on the ground and during the flood the dead floated by the thousands to the sea A RIDE ON THE the river is the one which flows from near pekin on down the ac sa a and up it ft all of the freight which supplies the norbern northern provinces of china must go it ft isa is a winding muddy stream navigable only for large ships about fifty alty miles or as tax tar as tien tsin this is is a bar at its mouth and it is only at high tide and with a proper wind that you cangel can get over this during my tri trip this summer we lay for two days outside hutsi e the bar under the shadow of the taku forts form before we could get over and in coming away we had to wait two days for the proper wind and flood to get outside ot of the river secretary foster and ana party were on the same ship we had a cargo af bones for japan and be twixt the smell and the sea the delay was by no means pleasant in going up the you wind your way through a low flat plain which is covered with one story houses of mud these houses are built right along the banks of the river and the land back of them is divided up into farms and or chadds the blossoms were out during the time that ident up the and the brown plain was spotted here and there with vast patches of white and pink flowers half naked children squatted on the banks and there were thousands of people at work in the fields in the early morning you could see them going out to work from the villages they marched by the hundreds along the paths going always in single file at tien tsin I 1 found an ocean of shipping lying at the wharves there are boats ot of all kinds and from all parts of china there were acres of rafts made ot of logs which were to be sold as lumber there were great barges and junks loaded with all kinds of merchandise and as we neared the city we came into a forest of masts among which swarmed tens of thousands of blue coated brown skinned men loading and unload unloading the ships to which they belonged there were so many of these coolies that they made me think of a swarm of ants and they were quite as busy as ants at their work every man went on the trot and I 1 saw them at work from early morning until late at night there is no machinery used on the wharves of any chinese city there axe are no derricks and no steam engines human muscle carries all the freight and the hea heaviest diest of packages are borne off on the backs of men I 1 was surprised at their strength I 1 saw sa coolies at tien tsin who could lift pounds and some were carrying bales ot of cotton on their backs at bankow I 1 saw coolies unloading ingots ingols of steel which weighed half a ton these ingots ingols were brou brought I 1 ht from belgium to china in ler stat that the chinese might experiment with them in the making of railroads A half dozen coolies would take hold bold of one of these big pieces ot of steel raising it by means of ropes and poles and they would grunt and sing as they carried it off of the steamer all the boats on the yingtse are unloaded in this way and at all of the ports there are great hulks or barges filled with men who wait for the steamers and who handle bandle all of their freight CHINAS VAST BOAT population there are millions upon millions of people who get their living off of the chinese rivers china is said to have more boats than all the rest of the world put together and its boat population in all probability be greater than that of all europe and america 0 on the pearl river in south auth china at the city of canton there are said to be people who were were born live and die upon the water this river which you reach from hong hoag kong is filled with crafts of all kinds from the small steamer to the great chinese junk there are thousands of sampans sam pans or little chinese gondolas with great black and white eyes painted on each side of their prow there are cargo boats which have bigger eyes and there are vast ships the eyes of which are as large around as a dinner plate the chinese paint eyes on all their boats and a sailor would as soon think ot of trying to travel through a city blindfolded as of sailing on a boat which had not a pair air of eyes painted on the front of it I 1 found whole families living on these boats and I 1 saw some not more than twenty feet in length which contained three generations of chinese I 1 remember one woman who rowed me to shore at hong kong she was working away with a baby of about two years old tied on her back I 1 heard a squall in the rear of the boit boat and looking back I 1 saw a raw red baby frantically waving its rosy arms and crying out its protests through its toothless gums this woman had no other home hom ethan than her boat and on such boats children are born grow up and die marriages take place upon them and all of the features of household life are to be seen in connection with them on some of the larger boats at canton the children fairly swarm and little ones of two and three years play about their decks I 1 saw a number of boys on these boats who had little round barrels or drums about a foot long and six inches in diameter tied to their backs I 1 was told these were life preservers and that it the child fell overboard he could float till his mother or father came to his discue rescue I 1 was surprised to see that many of the girls of the boats had no such protection and upon asking why I 1 was told that it was considered by some of the people a piece of good fortune to lose a girl as they would in this way save the expense of raising her I 1 doubt this however it is a tact fact though that poor girls are of little account in china this is especially so among the boat population I 1 visited one place just off the river at shanghai where there were perhaps five hundred chinese babies in a foundling asylum one of the people i in n charge arge told me that you could bu buy girl ir babies all the way from a cent to a ollar dollar apiece and that they took babies from their mothers upon the payment of twenty cents apiece by the mothers girls are sometimes bought this way and raised for improper purposes women are sold regularly by their parents for wives and concubines and I 1 was told that a full grown maiden of fair beauty was worth irom from 25 and upward there are hun deeds of boats at canton upon which dinners and banquets are given and which have numbers of girls connected with them who are kept for the amusement of the guests there are boats which are owned by beggars and I 1 was told by one of our consuls that babies were sometimes bought and their eyes put out in order that they might be raised as blind beggars OFFICIAL BARGES AND CHINESE JUNKS each of the high officials who live along ahe chinese rivers has his own boat this is decorated with flags and the bigger the man the more nags flags and bunting L li hunk hung chang has a steam launch when his wife died not lone on ago a gorgeous corneous funeral barge was made for her this was decorated with white which is the chinese color for fourr mourning and it looked gorgeous to american eyes the chinese have boats which are worked by the feet and which are shaped just like a slipper these are used as dispatch boats they agrenot are not much bigger than the ordinary canoe and they can be made to go very fast at canton I 1 was shown boats which had paddle wheels at the sides and which were worked by man power the men turned the wheels inside the boat which connected with the paddle wheels out side and a half a dozen men were do ing the work of an ordinary gas engine I 1 could fill this column with descriptions ot of the different kinds of boats used by the chinese each section has its own peculiar make of boats and a chinese sailor can tell to what part of the country a ship belongs as soon as he sees it there is a vast boat traffic in the far interior of china I 1 saw boats at bankow which had come down almost from the borders of thabet they were made so that they could jump the rapids and work their way through the great gorges of achang these gorges are two hundred and seventy miles above bankow and nearly a thousand miles from the sea the great yingtse river here flows through immense canyons the rocks of which rise for hundreds oi of feet straight tit up above the water the gorges are in in places less than a thousand feet wide and the great river rushes through them at the rate of nine miles an hour it rises and falls ten and twelve feet in a single night and it boils and seethes as it goes through here is an eddy there a whirlpool and there against the rocks it dashes in in a spray almost like that of the sea the rocks are filled with all kinds of ferns they are of granite and along the edges blue gowned pigtailed pig tailed workmen are quarrying great blocks of granite which are shipped down the yingtse kiang there are miles of these gorges and the scenery about them is the most beautiful in china the boats are tracked through the gorges and there is quite a population along them whose main support is from such work DUCK AND GOOSE BOATS the queerest boats I 1 saw during my trip on the pearl river were those devoted to the raising of geese and ducks the chinese are the best fowl raisers of the world they raise ducks by artificial incubation and they know just how to feed and care for them for five days after they leave the shell they are not allowed to hear any noise noise and their food consists of boiled rice water after this they are given boiled rice for the first two weeks they are kept in a coop and then they are put on the boats and made to shift for themselves the boats are very clumsy and they are somewhat like rafts one boat will sometimes hold more than a thousand ducks which are in charge of one or two keepers the duck farmer rows or sculls the boat to the low land along the banks of the rivers or creeks and he drives the ducks off from time to time to least feast on the worms and snails which arphere are here tobe to be found he has the ducks so trained that he can call them back to the boat at will and he hurries them up by giving the last duck a blow witha with a stick after the ducks are grown atee lp carries them from one market to another on his boat there are fowl markets in all odthe of the cities and the goose market of canton is filled with thousands of tards every day fowls are sold both dead and alive the ducks and geese are dried and pressed and they are shipped in large quantities all over china taxes will now be collected on all such articles of food and there will toe be nothing which passes through the livers which will not have to pay a share to this fund demanded by japan SALT BOATS one of the chief resources of the chinese government is through the sale of salt and the taxes on salt will now be greatly increased the salt trade in china is is a government monopoly and no one can sell it without a license from the salt commissioner commissi over there are salt boats and salt junks on all the rivers the salt is carried in junks through the larger streams and is taken to the villages through the canals in smaller boats the country is divided |
