The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-11-21

home. Among the Americans were an agent of one of our talking machine com panies, Standard Oil man and the rep resentative of a roof and paint house of San Francisco.
 We left Pekin in the morning and ar rived at Hankow the next afternoon. Our way was across the Great Plain, which Is said to support more people than the United States. We passed villages at every few miles and walled towns and cities every half hour The Great Plain is thiclSly settled, and every foot of it Is cultivated. Nearing Hankow the land becomes rolling. and there are low noun tain ranges. The sides of the hills are terraced in fields of all shapes and sizes and the valleys are cut up into gardens of walled patches, most of which con- tain rice.
 In the north many of the huts arc flat roofed. in the south the roofs are ridge shaped and matched with straw. They are made of stone or mud. The stations are of gray brick. roofed with red tiles. Crowds met our train at every stop and they were usually kept in order by na- tive soldiers, who wore blue uniforms, with black caps and fat black boots. We took on and put off passengers at all the stations. The most of these were Chinese, who rode second class. I under EldDu tndl l0t SLOW tIhlilSyA WHICH HdVS cheaper fares, are even more crowded, and that the passenger traffic pays we'll
 The Yellow River Bridge.
 The most remarkable piece of engineer ing on this railroad is the Yellow river bridge, which we crossed during the night. Outside America it is the largest of it's kind in the world. It measures almost two miles from end to end and is constructed entirely of steel. There is no stream which shifts its bed more than the Yellow river. It is called China's Sorrow, and is said to have changed it's course no less than nine times within the past 20 centuries, each time choosing a different mouth by which it enters the sea- At the last great flood, when the waters forsook their bed. many millions were drowned.
 The bed of the Yellow river Is of quick sand. so deep that it was impossible to use any masonry in constructing this bridge. Steel tubes were sunk in place of the ordinary concrete pillars and these were joined together by steel bands. There are eight of these steel tubes, each of which goes 59 feet down into the bed of the river. Other steel tubes extend down from 8 to 45 feet. The arches of the bridge have a span of 65 feet, where the current is strongest, and of 9S feet in
 
 have been filled with cement to give them strength. and rock and stones have been sunk around their bases to solidify their foundations. The stones were first dropped down into the river without any support, and were carried away by the quicksand Later, mats made of the branches of trees. bound together with wire, were let down around the piles, and the stones dropped upon them. In this way tons of stone have been moored on such rafts about each pile, and they have made the bridge as firm as though the l piles were bedded in concrete. This bridge was put up in year and half, and on the opening day train of 21 car l carriages passed over 1t without causing a perceptible vibration.
 Cheap Railroad Building.
 The steel for the Yellow river bridge came from Belgium and France and the | cost of its construction was $900, ,00o, which l is low considering its character and length. The whole road has been econom- | ically built. It's cost has been about s35,- | 900 a mile, the funds having been pro- vided largely by the Belgians, who loaned | s22, ,5O0,O00 on it. Most of the rails were | made at the Hankow Iron Works, and | they weigh approximately S5 pounds to the yard. The railway is well equipped | with shops at Hankow and at the Ye- | low river. and altogether 1t is a trunk | line to which China can point with pride. ! Since it's completion branches have been l built to Tai Yuen-Fu. the capital of the | province of Shansi: and also to Kaifeng- 1 Flu, the capital of Honan. It has connec- tions with the road running from Tientsin | to Mukden, and thereby with the Trans | Siberian road, so that one can now go | from Hankow to Hamburg by rail. Lines 1 have also been projected which will con meet this road with another great trunk I railway now being built through eastern China, from Tientsin to the Yangtse, and a road is projected which will go west ward through the Chinese empire to the mountains of Tribet and eventually reach Lhassa. third road is to be built. con- meeting Pukow. on the Yangtse, opposite Ranking with the Hankow system So that eventually this line will be about the most important of all eastern Asia