As cultivated land in this part of China generally costs more than fifty dollars a mow, so, if fifty dollars be taken as the average rate, the value of these 364,800 mow would amount to $18,240,000. This will help a great deal to defray the expenses of improving the waterway for navigation and for preventing floods in this Delta. b. The West River The West River is at present navigable for comparatively large river steamers up to Wuchow, a distance of 220 miles by water from Canton, and for small steamers up to Nanning, a distance of 500 miles from Canton, at all seasons. As for small crafts, the West River is navigable in most of its branches, west to the Yunnan frontier, north to Kweichow, northeast to Hunan and the Yangtze Valley by the Shingan Canal. In improving the West River for navigation I shall divide the work into subsections as follows: (1) From Samshui to Wuchow. (2) From Wuchow to the junction of the Liukiang. (3) Kweikiang or the North Branch of the West River from Wuchow to Kweilin and beyond. (4) The South Branch from Shunchow to Nanning. (1) From Samshui to Wuchow. This part of the West River is generally deep and does not need much improvement for vessels up to ten-foot draught excepting at a few points. The midstream rocks should be blasted and removed and sand banks and dilating parts should be regulated by submerged dikes to secure a uniform channel and to make the velocity of the current even, so that a stable fairway could be maintained all the year round. The traffic of this river would be sufficiently great to pay for all the improvements which we propose to make. (2) From Wuchow to the Junction of the Liukiang. At this junction, a river port should be built to connect the deep navigation from the sea and the shallow navigation of Hungshui Kiang and the Liukiang which penetrate the rich mineral districts of Northwest Kwangsi and Southwest Kweichow. This port will be about fifty miles from Shunchow which is the junction of the Nanning branch of the river. So here, we have only to improve a distance of fifty miles, for the improvement of the river between Shunchow and Wuchow will be included in the plan for the Nanning Port. Dams and locks would be necessary to make this part of the river navigable for ten-foot draught vessels. But these dams at the same time would serve the purpose of producing water power.