Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/45

cutting made for that purpose was repaired and kept open by succeeding dynasties until the tenth century, when the Sung emperors, having established their metropolis at Hang-chou, excavated a water-way northward from that city to Chinkiang on the Yangtse, thus establishing connection with the Han sovereign's canal which enters the Yangtse at a point opposite to Chinkiang on the northern bank of the river. What the Mongol ruler, Kublai, did in the thirteenth century was to add the last section to the work, namely, the section from Peking to the Yellow River, the engineer being Kwoh Chou-king, reported to have been the best mathematician ever produced by China. It will thus be seen that the canal was constructed in three parts, the first and second at an interval of nearly twelve hundred years, the second and the third at an interval of about three hundred. Clever advantage was taken of all natural aids en route, so that the canal crosses no less than six lakes between Hang-chou and the Yellow River, and two streams are led into it between the latter and the Peiho, which river carries it through a distance of eighty miles to Tung-chou, a town fourteen miles from Peking. The total length of the canal is about 650 miles. In some cases its bed is raised to a height of twenty feet above towns lying along its course; in others it descends to a depth of seventy feet below the adjacent plane. At the time of its construction it ranked immeasurably above any