The other great public work is the Grand Canal, or _Chah ho_ (_i.e._, river of Flood-gates), called also _Yun ho_ or ‘Transit River,’ an enterprise which reflects far more credit upon the monarchs who devised and executed it, than does the Great Wall, and if the time in which it was dug, and the character of the princes who planned it, be considered, few works can be mentioned in the history of any country more admirable and useful. When it was in order, before the inflow of the Yellow River failed, by means of its connection with its feeders, an uninterrupted water communication across the country from Peking to Canton existed, and goods and passengers passed from the capital to nearly every large town in the basins of the two great rivers. The canal was designed by Kublai to reach from his own capital as far as Hangchau, the former capital of the Sung dynasty, and cannot be better described than in Marco Polo’s language: “You must understand that the Emperor has caused a water communication to be made from this city [Kwa-chau] to Cambaluc, in the shape of a wide and deep channel dug between stream and stream, between lake and lake, forming as it were a great river on which large vessels can ply.”[17] The northern end is a channel fourteen miles long, from Tung-chau up to Peking, which, passing under the city walls, finishes its course of some 600 miles at the palace wall, close by the British Legation; here it is called _Yu ho_, or ‘Imperial River,’ but all boats now unlade at the eastern gate. An abridged account of Davis’s observations[18] will afford a good idea of its construction and appearance. “Early on the 23d September, we entered the canal through two stone piers and between very high banks. The mounds of earth in the immediate vicinity were evidently for the purpose of effecting repairs, which, to judge from the vestiges of inundation on either side, could not be infrequent. The canal joins the Yu ho, which we had just quitted, on its eastern bank, as that river flows towards the Pei ho. One of the most striking features of the canal is the comparative clearness of its waters, when contrasted with that of the two rivers on which we had hitherto travelled; a circumstance reasonably attributable to the depositions occasioned by the greater stillness of its contents. The course of the canal at this point was evidently in the bed of a natural river, as might be perceived from its winding course, and the irregularity and inartificial appearance of its banks. The stone abutments and flood-gates are for the purpose of regulating its waters, which at present were in excess and flowing out of it. As we proceeded on the canal, the stone flood-gates or sluices occurred at the rate of three or four a day, sometimes oftener, according as the inequalities in the surface of the country rendered them necessary....