Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, OCT. 25, 1898. China.

Manawatu Herald, 25 October 1898, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, OCT. 25, 1898. China.

It is satisfactory to learn from the late cablegrams that Great Britain and Qermany have agreed upon their share of the celestial Empire. The agreement recognises the Yangtsee valley as England's railway sphere, and Shantung Yellow river as Germany's sphere. Shantung is the name of a province, and the proper name of the Yellow river is the Hoang ho. The area ' drained by this, one of the principal rivers of China, is some 715,000 square miles, within which there is a large population. The length of the river is some 2,800 miles, but we should gather that the trade could be considerably increased by railway com munication as the river is not navigable. Against this advantage there would have to be set the fact that the rioh lands in the valley would have to be avoided by the railway as the river is a very turbulent and wayward stream, has a bad habit of shifting its course very con I siderabiy, and of flooding the adjacent ! country. This river rises south of the Kuen-Lum Mountains and io 1851-53 had an outlet a little to the north of Nankin, but then changed its course northwards and emptied itself into the Gulf of Pechili, a distance of 820 miles from its former outlet. In some parts of its oourse the river-bed is above the great plain through which it passes, and the embankments are a source of never ending expense to the government. The banks giving way causes dreadful inundations, the one which occurred in 1887 destroyed millions of lives. The Hoang-ho derives its name of Yellow river from the immense quantity of sediment whioh it gathers in the provinces of Saan-hai

and Shen-hsi, and deposits in the aea. For those who have not a late Atlas handy we may state that this territory is in the north of China, and north of the Yangtse valley, which thus places Germany's sphere as a sort of buffer between Russia and England. The Yangtse valley acknowledged by Germany as England's railway sphere is a far different slice of terri tory. The Yang^tsze-kiang is the longest and most important of Chinese rivers, and affords a waterway across the whole breadth, and almost through the centre of China to the mountains of Tibet. Some of its tributaries are over 1000 miles long and its basin is estimated at 950,000 pquare miles. Its importance for commerce is enormous On the river are the towns of Chin, kiang, Ngan-king, Hankow, Wuchang, Jchang, and all towns of importance, and the last mmcd a treaty port opened in 1890.