But the greatest disaster of this sort occurred in 1887, when the heavy fall rains of the northwest provinces swelled the streams, and the Yellow River finally broke its banks at a sharp bend in the Ho-nan province, where the town of Cheng Chou is situated. Frantic efforts were made to close the gap, but in vain. It rapidly grew to a width of one thousand two hundred yards. Some distance away the yellow torrent turned into the valley of a small stream known as the Luchia, down which it rushed in an easterly direction, overwhelming everything in its path.
“Twenty miles from Cheng Chou it encountered Chungmou, a walled city of the third rank. Its thousands of inhabitants were attending to their usual pursuits. There was no telegraph to warn them, and the first intimation of disaster came with the muddy torrent that rolled down upon them. Within a short time only the tops of the high walls marked where a flourishing city had been. Three hundred villages in the district disappeared utterly, and the lands about three hundred other villages were inundated.
“The flood turned south from Chungmou, still keeping to the course of the Luchia, and stretched out in width for thirty miles. This vast body of water was from ten to twenty feet deep. Several miles south of Kaifeng the flood struck a large river which there joins the Luchia. The result was that the flood rose to a still greater height, and pouring into a low-lying and very fertile plain which was densely populated, submerged upward of one thousand five hundred villages.
“Not far beyond this locality the flood passed into the province of Anhui, where it spread very widely. The actual loss of life could not be computed accurately, but the lowest intelligent estimate placed it at one million five hundred thousand, and one authority placed it at seven million.”
The inundated provinces were under water four months. Two million survivors were left destitute. The mind quails at the appalling magnitude of such a catastrophe.
Such is the warning given by the Yellow River. It is urged that if the Mississippi is heavily leveed, the same results will follow. The Po is another instance. The bed of the stream has been raised by dykes until it is higher in many places than the tops of the houses, and such disasters as have befallen the dwellers near the Yellow River of China, have only been avoided because of the fact that the Po is a comparatively diminutive stream. It is said that the same state of affairs exists on a smaller scale still on the Tiber. But the opponents of the outlet theory ascribe the China floods to ignorant engineering--a charge that can not be easily made to stick, when it is remembered that the Chinese have some of the most remarkable specimens of engineering skill in existence.
