THE GEOLOGIC HISTORY OF CHINA 



113 



ress. Roads are plentiful, and so the cart and the wheel-barrow are the 

 principal vehicles for through traffic. 



This is one of the few parts of China where boats can be but little 

 used. The streams are shallow and full of sand bars, and on account 

 of the pronounced wet and dry seasons many of them are intermittent. 

 For these reasons the majority of them are not navigable. The deeply 

 eroded land of Shan-tung has, however, suffered a relatively recent 



Fig. 18. A Roadway sunk deep into the Loess by Centuries of Travel. 



movement — apparently a sinking of the land — which has allowed the 

 ocean to penetrate the mouths of many of the coastal valleys. This 

 marginal drowning has produced some excellent harbors — such as that 

 of Chee-fu, the great silk port, and Tsing-tau, the German stronghold. 

 On the west, and encircling the Shantung hills, lies the great plain 

 of the Huang-ho or Yellow Eiver, which will serve as the type of many 

 much smaller plains in various parts of China. As explained before, 

 this vast gently sloping plain has been built by the Yellow River and 

 some of its tributaries in an effort to preserve a uniform gradient across 



