Page:China and the Manchus.djvu/63

Rh The vagaries of the Yellow River, named "China's Sorrow" by a later Emperor, were always a source of great anxiety to Kʽang Hsi; so much so that he paid a personal visit to the scene, and went carefully into the various plans for keeping the waters to a given course. Besides causing frequently recurring floods, with immense loss of life and property, this river has a way of changing unexpectedly its bed; so lately as 1856, it turned off at right angles near the city of Kʽai-fêng, in Honan, and instead of emptying itself into the Yellow Sea about latitude 34°, found a new outlet in the Gulf of Peichili, latitude 38°.

Kʽang Hsi several times visited Hangchow, returning to Tientsin by the Grand Canal, a distance of six hundred and ninety miles. This canal, it will be remembered, was designed and executed under Kublai Khan in the thirteenth century, and helped to form an almost unbroken line of water communication between Peking and Canton. At Hangchow, during one visit, he held an examination of all the (so-called) B.A.'s and M.A.'s, especially to test their poetical skill; and he also did the same at Soochow and Nanking, taking the opportunity, while at Nanking, to visit the mausoleum of the founder of the Ming dynasty, who lies buried near by, and whose descendants had been displaced by the