Geological researches in China, Mongolia, and Japan, during the years 1862-1865.

CHINA, MONGOLIA, AND JAPAN. 3
On the other hand the E. W. system of trends, which is so important in Central
Asia, exercises an influence which is apparent much farther eastward.l
A range of mountains, said to have several snow-covered peaks, originating in
Southern Kansuh, runs due east, separating the waters that enter the Yellow river
through the Wei and the Loh, from those that flow to the Yangtse through the
Kialing and the Han, and finally disappears in western Honan. Another range,
with a mean E. by S. trend, is given by Klaproth as forming the boundary between
Sz'chuen on the south and Shensi and Kansuh on the north.
It is not improbable, that the country included between these two ranges in Shensi
and Kansuh, is an elevated table-land. The courses of the Han and Kialing rivers
and the communication between their waters, as indicated by Chinese authorities,
seem to favor this idea.
In the south, the Nanling mountains, a range said to have peaks that reach above
the snow-line, rise in Yunnan, and, branching, form, in the- northern member, the
boundary between Kwangsi and Kweichau, while the southern member trends
off into Kwangsi. The influence of the northern branch of the Nanling, is apparent
as far as Fuhkien, in the probably comparatively low watershed north of Kwangtung.
The higher portion of this range seems to be along the southern boundary of
Kweichau, where it has lofty peaks and fertile elevated table-lands,2 which, from
difficulty of access, have been for ages the home of the aboriginal Miautsz, a race
unconquered by the surrounding civilization. The two passes that cross this range
in Hunan and Kiangsi, where it is called the Meiling, cannot be very high, as the
portage between the head of boat navigation on the two flanks is only a few miles.
According to Biot,3 the members of Lord Amherst's embassy give the height of the
Kiangsi pass as 3000 feet. The great map of Kanghi gives an uninterrupted water
communication between the headwaters of the Siang river of -Iunan and those of
a tributary of the Si river, that flows through the city of Kweilin.
I have here attempted to trace only those ridges which seem to be the most
important, as exhibiting the general configuration of China. To the E. W. ranges
is due the fact, that the mean courses of the great rivers of the empire lie east and
west. But the total length of each river is made up of N. E. reaches, where it
flows through broad and fertile longitudinal valleys, and of southeasterly or southerly
reaches in which it traverses, by deep and narrow gorges, the N. E. S. W. ridges.
i All that is known of these two systems, the N. S. and the E. W. is derived from the Jesuit
maps and from Chinese writers.
2 Chinese Repository, I. 40.
3 Recherches sur la hauteur, etc., Journ. Asiat., 1840.