Page:The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey.djvu/134



province of gets its name by combining the first syllable of its metropolis Kiangning (another name for Nanking) with that of Soochow, the capital, its richest city.

The area of the province is about 38,600 square miles, and the population is computed to be 14,000,000. The province consists chiefly of flat tracts of exceedingly fertile land. It is, indeed, nothing else than the detritus of China's two mighty waterways, the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Doubtless the sea-coast was once much further inland than it is at present, but the sediment deposited in its bed from year to year gradually filled up the shallow ocean, and what were once islands are now hills in the midst of a great plain of fertile rice or wheat fields.

The Yellow River has always been an erratic stream, and in 1853 it changed its course, and now finds its way to the sea through the province of Shantung. The mighty Yangtse flows from the west through the south of the province, entering the sea beyond Shanghai. The Hwai river rises in the province of Honan, traverses the north of Anhwei, and enters the Hungtse lake in the north of Kiangsu, whence it has its outlet into the Grand Canal. This in its turn links the numerous lakes in the province together and provides a waterway throughout its entire length from north to south. The country is also intersected by innumerable navigable canals, rivers, and