The latter describes the city as quite
insulated by the ramifications of the river, from which channels and
canals pass all about it, adorned with many quays and bridges of stone.
The numerous channels in reuniting form two rivers, one the Min, and the
other the To-Kiang, which also joins the Yangtzu at Lu-chau.
[In his Introductory Essay to Captain Gill's River of Golden Sand,
Colonel Yule (p. 37) writes: "Captain Gill has pointed out that, of the
many branches of the river which ramify through the plain of Ch'eng-tu, no
one now passes through the city at all corresponding in magnitude to that
which Marco Polo describes, about 1283, as running through the midst of
Sin-da-fu, 'a good half-mile wide, and very deep withal.' The largest
branch adjoining the city now runs on the south side, but does not exceed
a hundred yards in width; and though it is crossed by a covered bridge
with huxters' booths, more or less in the style described by Polo, it
necessarily falls far short of his great bridge of half a mile in length.
Captain Gill suggests that a change may have taken place in the last five
(this should be six) centuries, owing to the deepening of the
river-bed at its exit from the plain, and consequent draining of the
latter. But I should think it more probable that the ramification of
channels round Ch'eng-tu, which is so conspicuous even on a small general
map of China, like that which accompanies this work, is in great part due
to art; that the mass of the river has been drawn off to irrigate the
plain; and that thus the wide river, which in the 13th century may have
passed through the city, no unworthy representative of the mighty Kiang,
has long since ceased, on that scale, to flow.
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