The great differences of level in winter and summer have always made this river nearly useless, except as a drain; while the effect of the long-continued deposit of silt along its lower level course has finally choked the mouth altogether. This remarkable result has been hastened, no doubt, by the dikes built along the banks to the east of Kaifung, which thus forced the floods to fill up the channel, and pushed the waters back over 500 miles to Honan-fu. Here the land is low, and the refluent waters gradually worked their way through marshes and creeks into the river Wei on the north bank, and thus found a north-east channel into the Canal and the Ta-tsing River, till they reached the Gulf of Pechele. A small part of these floods have perhaps gone south into the head-waters of the river Hwai, and thence into Hung-tsih Lake; but that lake has shrivelled, like its great feeder, and all its waters flow into the Yangtsz’. The history of the Yellow River furnishes a conclusive argument against diking a river’s banks to restrain its floods. It has now reverted to the channel it occupied about fourteen centuries ago.[10] ~THE YANGTSZ’ KIANG.~ Far more tranquil and useful is its rival, the Yangtsz’ kiang, called also simply _Kiang_ or _Ta kiang_, the ‘River,’ or ‘Great River.’ It is often erroneously named on western maps, Kyang Ku, which merely means ‘mouth of the river.’ The sources of the Kiang are in the Tangla Mountains and the Kwănlun range, and are placed on native maps in three streams flowing from the southern side of the Bayan-kara. This has been partly confirmed by Col. Prejevalsky. In January, 1873, he reached the Murui-ussu (Tortuous River) in lat. 35°, long. 94°, at its junction with the Napchitai, the northern of the three branches, and found it 750 feet wide at that season. In spring, the river’s bed there is filled up a mile wide. Its course thence is south-east, receiving three other streams, all of which may be considered as its head-waters. All their channels are over ten thousand feet above the sea, but the ranges near them are under the snow-line. There is no authentic account of its course from this union till it joins the Yalung kiang in Sz’chuen, a distance of nearly 1,300 miles; but Chinese maps indicate a south-easterly direction through the gorges of the Yun ling, till it bursts out from the mountains in lat. 26° N., where it turns north-east. During much of this distance it bears the name of the Po-lai-tsz’. The Yalung River rises very near the Yellow River, and runs parallel with the Kiang in a valley further east, flowing upwards of 600 miles before they join. Great rafts of timber are floated down both these streams, for sale at the towns further east, but no large boats are seen on them before they leave the mountains. The town of Batang, in Sz’chuen, on the road from H’lassa, is the first large place on the river. The main trunk is called Kin sha kiang (_i.e._,