THE RIVERS

When the Amorites founded a great empire under Hammurabi in 2100 B.C., centering on a small river town called Babylon, it was the River Tigris that took the humans by the hand and led them down the farspeeding avenue of their destiny. So here in Manchuria, also, it was the rivers, not the flags, which the economic and cultural developments of the Tungus, the original Manchus, followed. The Amur, the longest of the rivers, is 2,500 miles in length. Some 2,000 miles of that distance are navigable. The Chinese call it Heilungkiang-Black Dragon River. There is little doubt that the name came from the somber color of its sweeping flood. The Shilka and the Argun Rivers come together at Strelotchnoi and give birth to the Amur. From that point on it makes its majestic way along the Manchurian boundary until it empties into the Gulf of Tartary east of the town of Nikolaievsk, made famous by the unspeakable massacre of 700 Japanese-men, women, and babies, including the family of the consul-in March, 1920.

In its southeasterly course down to Chichakha, near where it mingles with the waters of the Sungari, the Amur gathers in such major streams as the Khumar from the south and the Zaya and the Burega from Siberia on the north, before it passes out of Manchuria at Khabarovsk. Up to Mitrofanova, some 1,900 miles from its mouth, a river steamer can make its way. It is so broad that at many points a man standing on its bank may easily fancy himself looking across a bay. Even while passing through mountain gorges it measures some 2,000 feet in width.

"Sungari-oola" is the name by which the natives know the Sungari. In Manchu it means the River of Heaven. It rises amid the snows of the Changpai Ranges and winds its way over the plains of Kirin Province. In the

neighborhood of the City of Kirin its valley is narrow. As one travels down its course he finds its right bank is edged by spurs of mountain ranges covered with dense forests. As the stream sweeps out upon the level plains, it divides into innumerable branches. The main stream broadens at some points to nearly 1,800 feet. Near Petuna, where it has almost completed the circuit of the western portion of Kirin Province, it makes a long detour before swallowing the Nonni, the largest of its tributaries. Here it attains the depth of 20 to 40 feet, and at the widest point measures about 180 yards. So it reaches the City of Harbin, the greatest distributing center of North Manchuria. Thence it makes its northeasterly way until it empties into the Amur.

It is this river system of the Sungari and the Nonni which justifies all sorts of extravagant prophecies about the great wheatfields of North Manchuria.

The Tumen and the Yalu are the two great streams which mark Manchuria from Chosen. The Tumen rises along the southern slopes of the eastern skirt of the Changpai range and flows on through some 750 miles into the Sea of Japan.

The Yalu is better known to America and Europe than most of the rivers of the Far East-largely because the men under Kuroki in the historic days of the RussoJapanese war crossed it in a dramatic manner and proved to the skeptical world that the East could beat the Occident at its own game of steel and explosives. Aside from that, the position of the river adds to the importance of the stream. It rises from the western slope of the Paitou-shan-White Head Mountain-in the Changpai range and rushes down to the Yellow Sea, past the old and new city of Antung. Antung is increasing in the magnitude of its foreign and domestic trade with the years that come and go.

As a navigable stream the Yalu has its limitations. It

is shallow for the most part, and its current is swift. It is some 500 miles long; but only light Chinese junks could make their way up to Maoehrshan, less than 270 miles from its mouth. Even near Antung the depth of its water does not always permit small coasting steamers to enter and clear with freedom. Only a light-draft steamer of high speed can navigate the stream with safety.

The Yalu attained a high fame largely because of the timber in its upper reaches, which has already been told of in Chapter I of this book.

On its way to the sea it annexes the Hun-kiang and the Aiho on the Manchurian side and the Jiho-ko and the Unjo-ko from the Chosen side.

But after all, it is the Liao River which is the Mississippi, the Nile, the Ganges, the Yangtze of Manchuria. The Liao is made up of two major streams: the Main or Western Liao, which bears the name of Sharamulen while it drains the plains of Inner Eastern Mongolia and the northwestern corner of the Province of Mukden, and the Eastern Liao, which rises in the northwestern spur of the Changpai range and rushes down through innumerable ravines till it meets and mingles with the Main or Western Liao near Sankiangkou-some 200 miles in length. Together they form the Great Liao which waters the fertile fields of the Province of Mukden. Its valley includes more than one fifth of the total area of Mukden Province-practically the whole of the cultivated fields.

The town of Chengchiatun, the present terminus of the Ssupingkai-Taonan Railway, Chantu, Kaiyuan, Fakumen, Tiehling, Hsinmin, Mukden, Liaoyang, and Newchwang are some of the more important cities and towns which the river and its tributaries, such as the Hun and the Taitse, have called into being. They cluster within