however, from one year to another, until at last the red flood burst upon the plains and transformed a fruitful smiling country into lakes, lagoons and pestilential marshes.
As we steamed up the Peiho, there were many places where not a trace of the river's banks was to be discovered, and the further we ascended the more apparent became the ravages of the flood. The millet-crop was rotting under the water, and whole hamlets had in many places been swept away. The village dwellings, like the Taku forts, were for the most part constructed of millet-stalks and mud; but however well calculated to resist the shots of an ordinary foe, these frail abodes, one by one had silently dissolved before the invading waters, leaving nothing behind them but something that looked like grave-mounds, the melancholy landmarks of each new work of desolation. We could see the wretched villagers squatting on the tops of their hillocks, sheltered by scraps of thatch or matting which they had rescued from the flood. All who had means were removing to Tientsin, where the authorities were said to be doing their utmost to relieve the sufferers. Singularly enough I overheard a Chinaman say that he considered the flood a punishment for the Tientsin massacre, which had occurred just a year before.
It is quite impossible to estimate the misery that such disasters bring upon the toiling poor of the province, who are thus bereft of food, shelter and fuel; and that, too, when the winter was just at hand. The scene on all sides presented one sheet of water, only broken by the wrecks of villages, and by islands of mud where herds of cattle were packed and perishing for want of pasture. Men, women and children were to be seen fishing in the shallows of their harvest-fields. Fish were abundant; and this was fortunate, as the people had little else
