The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-06-02
A CHINESE LEGEND.
Leeds Mercury.

OI tHGIE uLSLOFyp WhCu 1iaO OCAOstauA empire was the one nation of which the earth had any knowledge, an em- peror, who was a mighty worker, ruled the land and brought peace and plenty into millions of homes. This great potentate was named Vii. When he ascended the throne great lake spread over the center of his domin- ions, and the story goes that the em- perdr made the lake into dry land. Were such bit of folk lore to have it's origin in this country, we should probably find the drying up of the waters assigned to some supernatural agency. The Chinese are, however, a practical people. The lake was not, according to the legend, absorbed by any resort to magical powers at all. What they say the emperor did was to erect great entertainments across the vast watery waste and then to turn the lake into the artificial channel and send it coursing merrily to the sea. The reclaimed land proved the most fertile in all China. It bore heavy and never failing crops; and twice dIINk SOIllCllluCS tAk lIO N0A 01o tdC earth there yield it's increase.
 The stream that took away the waters of the lake was named the Hoang Ho-this being the Chinese for Yellow river. An area upward of sixty five thousand square miles represents the land over which the waters rested in the time of Vii. 1t is over wide portion of this very area that they are spread out to-day. Many times over have the pent-up waters sought out their old resting place; and on every occasion have they swept towns and villages away and destroyed the vast population of the plain.
 There are indications that the Hoang Ho has altered it's course nine or ten times, and this means not simply an exchange of one bed for another, but a different outlet. The present delta of the river is 900 miles north of that which it is known to have occupied early in it's history. Formerly it fell into the Yellow sea above the Yangtse Kiang and ran southward it now takes northward course and loses itself in the gulf of Pechien.
 Autumn is the period when it is in flooded state. The rise of it's waters is not the result of the summer rains. It is the melted snows from the mountains that fill the stream but this is only part of the difficulty the Chinese along its course have to meet. The bed of the river is being raised continually by the deposition of quantities of earthly matter brought down from the mountains. At some parts this matter accumulates in the form of bars, damming back the waters; and everywhere it raises the bottom, making it necessary to heighten the entertainments. The higher the embankments the weaker they become; and although the works are kept in order in systematic way, the pressure upon them at places where the stream is suddenly damned back becomes too much for the bar rier. It is, however, only since 1852 that the river has changed its outlet.
 For many years up to that date 1t had kept pretty steady course and the inhabitants of the great plain over which it flows began to congratulate themselves with the thought that they had seen the last of its dangerous ten- dencics. The autumn of that year, however, 80 changed the character of the river that it is now task of greater difficulty than ever to keep it in check. When it settled down after the inundation of 1852 1t was found to have appropriated the bed of smaller stream and to be running hundreds of miles away from its former course. By many persons it was thought to have vanished alto gether, and foreigners living iii the neighborhood of the old delta wrote home to this effect. News travelled slowly in those days, and it is related that years elapsed before Europeans at the Chinese ports discovered that the change of the river had meant . terrible calamity in the interior of the country.
 The fact that the Hoang Ho in it's new route to the sea swept along . much smaller bed than the one it left, made the erection of suitable embark ments a costly and difficult undertak- ing; and it is precisely because the river has now . much more restricted passage than it had thirty to forty years ago tha. the inundatisns have become % frequent and appalling. To keep the treacherous river to its course the Chinese resort to two lines of &C., ton. In the first place they are sensi-
 bic enough to intrust the care of ths embankments to the best engineer
 they can select So long as the care
 takers are able to assert that the rivei
 flows xafely to the sea their pay i
 forthcoming and should they at any time master an incipient outbreak thu