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

CHINA, MONGOLIA, AND JAPAN. 67
CHAPTER VII.1
THE SINIAN2 SYSTEM OF ELEVATION.
I HAVE taken the liberty of giving this name to that extensive N. E. S. W. system of upheaval which is traceable through nearly all Eastern Asia, and to which
this portion of the continent owes its most salient features.
We have seen how generally prevalent this trend is in China, whether we consider the hydrography, the courses of the mountains,3 or the strike of the strata.
In crossing the plateau of M-ongolia from the Great Wall to Siberia, I found the
same trend predominating in the uplifted strata of old metamorphic rocks, and
generally in the ridges that cross the steppes of the Gobi.
A glance at any recent map of Siberia will show that the same rule may be applied to all of tie eastern part of this vast region. The Yablonoi, Altan-kingan, and
Stanovoi mountains, with all their intermediate, parallel ridges, that together form
the valley network of the upper Lena and Amur rivers, are instances of the development of this system on a grand scale. Although exceptions-that may or may not
belong to this system-to the general N. E. trend seem to exist in the Great Kingan mountains-the eastern edge of the great plateau-and in the continuation of
the Stanovoi in the far nortlLeast, still to the configuration arising from the prevalence
of this trend, are due the most marked features of Eastern Asia. The seas of Ochotsk
and of Japan, the gulfs of Pechele and of Tonquin, are geoclinal valleys of this
system of great geological age, which the disturbances of a long range of time
have not been able to obliterate. And a similar valley is, I think, indicated for
the land by the line of reference I have drawn through the valleys of the Yangtse
and Amur. As throughout China and across Mongolia I was unable to find anything more recent than the Chinese Coal measures affected by this uplift, and as,
to the extent of my knowledge, no younger rocks are affected by it in Siberia,4 it
seems proper for the present to refer all the N. E. ridges to one system, and their
origin to one revolution.
The, in many places, unconformable strikes and dips of the older metamorphic
schists of China show the existence of disturbances that had ceased before the formation of the great bed of limestone.
See Map, P1. 7.
2 From Sinim, the name applied to China in the earliest mention made of that country.-Isaiah.
$ That the general trend of their mountains is N. E. was known to the early native writers.
4 The explorations of M. Tchihatcheff, in the Altai, the eastern part of which belongs to the sys*
tem in question, failed to discover any rocks more recent than the Permian, affected by this uplift.