Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/76

44 of the Yang-tsze roll voluptuously in turbid yellow flood towards the sea, between low and scarcely perceptible banks ten miles apart. You may spend an unprofitable morning in guessing at the number of cubic feet of muddy water which pass by you every second, for little else will suggest itself to any one relying upon his external surroundings to set in motion his train of thought; and when you are tired of guessing, you may look up the answer in Mr Little's encyclopædic dissertation upon the Yang-tsze, and marvel at the divergence between your own estimate and the 1,000,000 cubic feet which you learn is the volume of water brought down per second at Hankow, 600 miles farther up, in the month of June. There is a story to the effect that when a certain English monarch threatened to remove his presence from London as a mark of his royal displeasure, the mayor and corporation made bold to express the hope that, when removing his court and his presence, he would vouchsafe to leave them the Thames. Yet, compared with the Yang-tsze, the Thames is a