Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. Vol. 13, no. 3.

Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. Vol. 13, no. 3. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/128 (page 173)
    bustle, crowding, and delays caused by tlio enormous goods-traffic by Pa Kwau. The instant we arrived at Liangwu sedan-chairs were brought to the boats, and a man stepped forward showing a paper setting forth that he was an employe of the Transit Com- pany, and asked us to hand over to him the keys of our boxes, and that then we need take no trouble about them, as the Com- pany were responsible that nothing was lost. We accordingly did as was desired of us, and jumped into the chairs provided. We were taken through about a mile and a half of mulberry-orchards, which form a belt to the right bank of the river of about 100 miles long, and from a quarter of a mile to three or four miles deep, up to the great mud embankment with which it has been necessary to protect the low-lying country from the ravages of the floods by the bore of the river. We were then shipped in our sedan- chairs into a ferry-boat, in which we crossed the river, which is here about 250 yards wide. Shortly after starting from Liangwu we saw the commencement of the great Shao hsing Viaduct, of which the old Jesuit Fathers have given a long but inaccurate account; when I say inaccurate, I merely mean to say that they have given as its indubitable history accounts which native scholars regard as problematical. What we can ascertain with certainty is as follows : before the completion of the Chekiang sea-barrier, and before the banking of the Ngo chiao River and the Han Estuary, the whole of the now fertile lowlands of the Chekiang province was a salt-marsh (in fact it would be so again were the sea-barrier, of which I will treat farther on, removed). The first Chinese colonies which came to the province speedily occupied and built towns on the highland, among the most ancient of which were Hang chow (called by Marco Polo Cambo dan) and Shao hsing. To connect these settlements with the Ngo chiao River by a pathway, in the then absence of canals, became a necessity, hence the erection of a long bridge across the then marsh, which has been so solidly laid that it still exfsts. This bridge is about 90 miles long, 5 feet wide, and has a parapet remaining, in some parts of about 2 feet high. Each stone bears the date at which it was put up cut upon it; of course it may be imagined that at the present day these dates are so effaced by time that they are only legible on the more modern stones which have been used at various times for reparation. I fancied, however, that I could decypher on one stone the name of one of the emperors of the Tang dynasty. Each stone is about 12 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot thick. The pillars in the water are about 4 feet wide, thus making rectangular arches of about 8 feet span. After the o 2