Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/37

source to mouth as the crow flies, and an actual length of probably 3,000 miles. It is one of the most interesting features in China, for not only is it the main, if not the only, means of communication between the east and the west of the great Empire, but also the "Valley" to which it gives its name—that is to say, the vast area of over six hundred thousand square miles watered by itself and its affluents—constitutes the very heart of the Middle Kingdom and attracts the ambitious eyes of more than one Occidental Power. The city of Chung-king, which stands upon the Yangtse 1,800 miles from its mouth, has been called the "commercial metropolis of Western China," just as Shanghai, situated on an affluent of the same river at a comparatively short distance from the sea, is called the "metropolis of the coast." Of the long stretch of river between these two cities the first thousand miles are easily traversed by steamers in six or seven days, but the remaining four hundred miles, though navigable by specially constructed vessels, offer serious difficulties owing to rapids of a dangerous character. The term "Yangtse" is not everywhere applied to the river. It has various names. Throughout the first 1,300 miles of its course from the Tanglu and Kwanlun mountains it is called the River of the Golden Sands (Kinsha-kiang). Then, after receiving an important affluent, the Yalung, which has hitherto been running nearly parallel to it for six hundred miles in a valley