Evening star., 1933-06-25
YELLOW RIVERS
RAMPACES COSTLY
Champion Bucking Broncho
Stream of China Terror
of Great Population.

1.-THE Hwang Ho, or Yellow River, is
the champion bucking broncho stream
of the world" says a bulletin from
the National Geographic Society in out
lining some of the freakish changes
that have taken place in the mighty
stream in food times. 1T hurdles its
banks, spreads death and deSolatlon IN
its track. and commanders Red Cross
workers with a Suddenness of passion
that cannot be foreseen.
while the Crusaders were fighting
Sn Palestine. the Hwang Ho emptled
into the Gulf of Pechili. near TientSin
a hundred miles north Of its last weeks
mouth. Then it swung its mouth
southwark 400 miles in single week,
and until 1852 emptied its yellow flood
into the Yellow Sea. Then it had an
other tantrum-hurdled the whole
promontory of Shantung and found its
outlet of recent decades, facing Port
Arthur
To-day it is the constant menace to
millions of people who live in what may
be its next river bed. 1t has been con-
fined to its recent course by huge dikes
that tower above a million homes. The
Shantung coolie has for centuries set
the example for the little Dutch lad
of the story book. who stuck his finger
in the f1ssure in the dixie and thus
saved his country.
Yellow Man Victor.
1.-The old Hwang Ho goes mad every
few years and lashes million inno-
cents with his swishing tail, but the
Shantung coolie, like a modern st.
George, enters the lists against the
foamy -mou.hed dragon and once more
confines it within earthen embank-
ments It is Yellow River against
yellow man-and the man ultimately
wins
Then he goes back to growing three
crops every two years in an impover-
ished soil that has been cultivated for
centuries and forces nature to support
as many Shantung farmers to the
square mile as pre-war Belgium sup
ported through highly developed in
dustry
IF the new break near Kaifeng re-
suits in a swing back to the old south
ern course, which strikes almost directly
eastward toward the Yellow Sea, nearly
300 miles of the lower portion of the
stream as 1t has existed for 80 years
will be abandoned. Shantung will then
be passed by entirely by the Hwang Ho.
THE Hwang Ho,' continues the bull
1etin, "is the second largest river in
China, being exceeded in size only by the
well known Yangtze. 1t is one of the
most extraordinary rivers in the world.
Its disastrous flooding has cost the Chi
nese millions of lives and millions in
wealth through the destruction of homes
and farmlands, and because of this it
has earned such titles as 'China's Sor-
row. the 'Ungovernable' and the
'Scourge of the Sons of Han
Not NavigabIe for Steamers.
Although it is huge stream, in all
its course, from its headwaters high up
in the Kunlun Range, in Tibet, all along
its 2,500-mile path to the sea, it is not
navigable for steamships or other deep
draft craft Its course is alternately
either too swift or broken by turbulent
rapids or widens and becomes too shall
low and filled with sand bars to allow
the use of large boats. In its upper
reaches. however before 1t emerges from
the hills into the lowlands, it carries an
interesting raft traffic that has persisted
for centuries. This is on the part of
the river that winds through Kansu
Province and along the edge of inner
Mongolia, from Shining to Paotow Chi
nese literature confirms the fact that
here the earlier sons of Han 1000 years
ago were using sfeepskin and oxhide
RATS identical with those which one
finds In use today"