496 Falling Off of Legacies-Dr. Phraner. quite natural that NOVEMBER should be selected for home missions. But on trial it was found not to be a favorable month for some, and the General Assembly allowed the churches to select and observe such a time as seemed to them best. Nevertheless, many of the churches had found November convenient and available, and have continued to take up their home missionary collections in that month. Some of these are old and strong churches; consequently from this date to the end of the year the tide begins to turn, and numerous and large collections begin to flow into our treasury. It has usually been so, and we pray that it be so this may year. If any churches, new or old, have not already a Sabbath or a month designated, we beg that they choose November and take a large annual collection for our empty treasury. The demand was never more pressing than now. The "friend of home missions" whose heart is burdened with the condition of the "hard-worked and self-denying missionaries," and who has sent us one fifth of the estimated reduction from last April 1 to the end of the year, wishes us to designate some one Sabbath in December on which we will ask all pastors to appeal to their churches to make a collection to relieve the missionaries from such an unexpected strain, and the Board itself from a charge of injustice. We have made special appeals to pastors and elders for special times designated by the General Assembly. We are appealing to them now publicly and privately in the synods and presbyteries, from the pulpit and by published literature, and we now again appeal to ministers and people, the rich and the poor, to come promptly to the help of the missionaries and the Board. The appeal to all that are delinquent is now timely, and it will be timely till they have gathered and forwarded to our treasury their customary collection. [December. We dare not designate any day in December for such a purpose, for that month is designated by the General Assembly as for the freedmen. We should not like to interfere. There must be money enough for both if we are diligent to gather it. We cannot forbear to call the attention of all pastors and all our friends and contributors to the falling off of large legacies to our Board this year. The legacies and special donations during the twelve months of last year amounted to $229,082.86. Up to the 1st November, seven months of the present fiscal year, they have amounted to only $56,790.06. How is the expected very large deficiency to be made up except by increased contributions from the churches? Are the pastors and the people keeping this matter in mind? An unusually large number of students from our theological seminaries have been engaged in missionary work among our feeble churches, mostly in the West, during the last summer. There must be a great number of interesting monthly concerts in the seminaries, as the old almanacs used to say, "about these days." Many of the places left vacant by the return of these young men to their studies need pastors at once. We are happy to announce that Rev. Wilson Phraner, D.D., so long the pastor at Sing Sing, N. Y., and so many years a member of the Board of Home Missions, proposes to spend the coming winter in California. He will be found an available and valuable helper of pastors and churches in everything pertaining to the work of missions and the cause of Christ. We bespeak for him a cordial welcome. This picture represents the normal school at Chefoo. All are students except the old elder in the centre. It was opened at the beginning of the present Chinese year, sixteen strong, and we hope to still increase the number to thirty or forty. As to the character of the pupils, they are all men who are interested in Christianity, and while the majority of them have not received baptism, they are what we consider hopeful subjects. They have all had several years training in the native studies, and what they require to make educated men of them is a few years of hard application at the Bible and the western sciences. Our three-years course is intended to meet this need. Mathematics, geography, geology, Old Testament history, outlines of books of the Old Testament, theory of teaching, evidences of Christianity, morals, physiology, chemistry, physics, astronomy and infantry drill will about make up the list of subjects taught. After finishing the course, if they prove satisfactory men, we expect to find them positions as teachers in our day schools, or as lay preachers. The very urgent need for such a school must be apparent to any one who understands the situation in Shantung. The call for preachers is loud and incessant, not necessarily for ordained men or for licentiates, but for earnest Christian men of discretion who can tell the heathen in a straightforward way the great truths of the Bible. More than this, wherever a little circle of Christians is to be found there is almost sure to be a day-school. Connected with the Chefoo work alone, there are about 498 Yellow River Floods. four hundred and fifty such pupils distributed through something like thirty schools. These schools are multiplying every year more and more rapidly. And already it is very difficult to find suitable men to instruct and influence these little boys and girls. We want men to put into these schools who can not only explain the Bible but who will live it, and who can lead and instruct God's people at their services on the Sabbath. And if a dozen such men are sent out from the [December, school every year, there will be work for all of them. As to teachers for our normal school, we consider that we are fairly well provided for, having three young men who are graduates of the Shantung College at Tungchow; besides, Dr. Corbett and I both teach when not absent itinerating. As to provision in the way of money, it is hardly necessary to say that our means are limited-that is always understood. YELLOW RIVER FLOODS IN SHANTUNG. The Hwang Ho or Yellow river rises in the plain of Odontala (lat. 35°, long. 96° east), where are numerous springs and lakelets formed between the mountains of Shuga and Bayan Kara. From the river's source to the sea it is only 1290 miles as the crow flies; but the river's actual length, owing to its tortuous course, is twice that distance. Leaving the defiles of the Shanshi mountains, the river debouches into the low Honan and Shantung plains, and flows in a northeasterly direction into the Gulf of Pechili. It cuts through this province (Shantung) diagonally from southwest to northeast, and from entrance to departure inundates yearly a strip of country varying from twenty-five to fifty miles in width-country which was once densely populated and of rare agricultural beauty. That is to say, about one quarter of the whole area of the province, or sixteen thousand square miles of valuable land, has been entirely or partially ruined, and from six millions to eight millions of people have suffered from this uncertain stream. The river is from two hundred yards to five hundred yards wide, according to the season, with low sandy banks, yellow water, a three-mile current, and abounding in shallows and continually-recurring bends. Ordinarily it is an unattractive and most harmless-looking stream; but when in flood, tearing through dykes and rushing over the growing harvests, it becomes terrible. Millions of money have been expended in building dykes of earth along its course through the province, these dykes being strengthened with stalks, piles and masonry at dangerous points. They look massive enough; but when the water hurls itself against and over them, there is nothing left but ruin―a mere suggestion to the onlooker that here once mén labored to raise a wall that might resist the water. The first dyke follows closely the north and south banks of the river, and bears the first pressure of the rising water. Then back from the river on either side one mile is raised the main embankment, 80 feet wide at the base, 20 feet at the top and 18 feet high. The mile of ground between the two embankments on either side of the river has been sacrificed to furnish earth for the embankments and extra room for the flood water after it has burst the first bank. CAUSES OF THE FLOODS. The causes of the floods are the melting snows of the northwest, the heavy summer rains and the silting up of the river bed. It seems impossible to persuade the Yellow river to scour its own channel. Yearly the river bed rises, until now in the vicinity of this city, Chinanfu, it is nearly on a level with the surrounding country, and the situation grows worse every year. Each season, as the summer advances, generally during July, we expect to hear that the embankments have broken and the country is flooded. The rising water first bursts through the dyke next the river; then If, rushes a mile over the country to the main dyke, where its progress is stopped. If, however, the water continues to rise, as it usually does (both inner and outer banks have broken every summer for at least the last six years), the great dyke, being composed simply of pounded earth, and that of a porous nature, soon gives way at some exposed point, when the flood pours through the opening with a roar, scooping out a depression forty, fifty, and even, as in the case of the Honan break, seventy feet deep. This flood gradually makes its way northward, spreading over the country so that one can sail for hours at a time over what were once the best districts of Shantung. SUDDEN VISITATION. Sometimes the flood comes upon the people suddenly and at night, giving them barely time to scramble to their house-tops, where they sometimes remain forty-eight hours at a stretch, with nothing to eat, besides losing all their goods. A year or two ago the river returned from Honan to its old bed through this province and worked great disaster. It was late in February, the weather was very cold, and the water came in the night and without warning. The people were all asleep. Whole villages (or rather the remains of villages) were wiped out of existence. One man said to me, "There were two men spending the night away from home, and they were the only ones saved from such and such a village." Some people living further from the river got to their house-tops, where they passed the night, but most wretchedly, for many lost fingers and toes from the frost, and some of the weaker ones died. The floods coming in July gradually disappear during the autumn and winter, but some of the water remains till the following spring. The amount of silt deposited is enormous. For a distance of fifteen miles north of the river the general level of the country has been raised from four to twelve feet, so that only the tops of trees and the roofs of brick houses can be seen projecting above the deposit. The people have rebuilt their houses many times, each time raising the 499 mound for the foundations higher, thinking thus to keep them from the water, only to find that the floods are more extensive each year from the increasing shallowness of the river, and so they have to stand by and see their adobe rooms water-soaked and toppling again. The land is sometimes improved and sometimes ruined by the water, according as alluvium or sand is deposited. I have seen a well-to-do man made destitute in a few weeks by having had his land covered evenly with a layer of sand three feet deep. Then at other times the land is greatly injured by being made alkaline, exuding soda, which must be carefully scraped off before planting time. Then sometimes worthless land has been made valuable by being covered with a thick layer of loam, which will produce an excellent crop without fertilizers. The river plays strange freaks. It takes off sand from one man's farm and leaves it on another's. It deposits soda here and alluvium there. This year a man has good land; next year it may be simply a desert of sand; the year after it may be valuable alluvium, and again an alkaline plain. The people know not what to expect. He who is down to-day may be up to-morrow, and vice versa. CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. The people may be roughly arranged in three classes-(1) those who have emigrated; (2) those who, scattered through the province, have become wandering beggars; (3) those who still remain in their old homes. The emigrants are those who, reduced to extremity, sold their few timbers and plot of ground for a song and started forth to seek new homes. Packing a barrow with an old quilt or two, a kettle, a few other utensils, a supply of bran and a few strings of cash, or, in more fortunate cases, a lump of silver, their capital at starting may vary from nothing up to $20. The head of the family puts his shoulders under the barrow strap, the boys help pull, and the women come stumping along behind. We have no word to express accurately the gait of a Chinese woman with bound feet. If the barrow is light, the babies are tied on, and the women also get a lift now and then. When there are few male members in the family, the women often have to pull the barrow, and more than once I have seen a woman under the shoulder strap, wheeling the barrow herself. Generally the emigrants travel in companies, and, with good roads, will go twenty miles a day. Some are headed north, going to Manchuria via Peking; some west to Shanshi or further. Many are doomed to die on the road. Fifty were frozen in one night twenty miles northwest of this city winter before last. Others reach their destination, but are unable to make a living, and so beg their way back. Others return after having gone half way, and a minority succeed in establishing themselves in their new homes and make a living. The governors of Shanshi and Shenshi became alarmed at these ragged armies, desperate with want and weary of travelling, crowding over their borders, and so have prohibited further immigration. Multitudes of people remained at home, until land, houses, implements, animals, all and everything, were sold for food, and then they set out to beg, so that from Peking to Chining Chow, from Chefoo for a thousand miles west, the appearance of the Yellow river. refugee is familiar. Not a village is so obscure that it is not visited by these unfortunates begging for broken food. Not an alley in any one of the cities of Shantung but is frequented by them. In travelling in any direction through the province you have them always with you. Those people still remaining in the flooded regions, not a half of the former population, live in small mud rooms built on the ruins of once respectable houses, or in squalid stalk hovels erected on the great dyke. The people look forward to a wheat crop in the spring, which may be harvested before the flood arrives. But it is uncertain. This year there was a beautiful wheat crop through these regions. What had been a sea of water in September, the next June had changed into a sea of wheat. But as the time for harvest approached, heavy rains delayed the threshing, wetting the wheat [December, and softening the threshing-floors until the people had not time to secure the grain before the arrival of the flood, which swept away great quantities of it. When the wheat fails, then outside aid must be furnished. The government has been busy furnishing aid largely in the form of bread' and browned flour (which can be eaten without further cooking). Such a life is naturally demoralizing, and the people inevitably degenerate. The government discourages migration to other parts of the empire less crowded, and the people are only too willing to stay. As they pathetically though weakly exclaim, "The ancestral earth is hard to leave." To the foreigner immigration would seem at least better than the wretched existence they lead at present, dependent largely on the insufficient and precarious charity of the government, which tends to pauperization. INFLUENCE ON MISSION WORK. These floods have interfered grievously with our missionary work. Some of our most hopeful fields are now half deserts and inaccessible for a good part of the year. We have therefore been compelled to turn our eyes to other regions largely, where we have sure hope of fruit in time. We have not deserted our people in these destitute regions, by any means. We manage to reach them some way, either by boat or wading or by barrow when the roads are passable. But in the midst of such melancholy scenes, when men are continually growing more bitterly poor, they have little heart for the investigation of a new doctrine even though it be the gospel. But it must be said that the benevolent labors of the missionaries throughout the region in famine relief will never be forgotten by the people, and in happier times, when the river shall have been kept within bounds and the prosperity of the region gradually returns, the work done in former years will undoubtedly come to fair fruitage. The clouds along the course of Yellow river are indeed at present dark, but after all they are only clouds, and will in due time roll away. ["Behind the clouds is the sun still shining."] |