390 



ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



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 intermit- 

 tent. For these reasons the majority of them are not navigable. 

 The deeply eroded land of Shantung has, however, suffered a rela- 

 tively recent movement — apparently a sinking of the land — which 

 has allow^ed the ocean to penetrate the mouths of many of the coastal 

 valleys. This marginal drowning has produced some excellent har- 

 bors, such as that of Chefoo, the great silk port, and Tsingtau, the 

 German stronghold. 





Fig. 3.— Sketch Map of the sh-t plain of the Yellow River. 

 The dotted lines indicate former courses of tlie river, as it spread over its alluvial fan. 



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

 of the Hwang or Yellow River, 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 uni- 

 form gradient across the sunken portion of eastern China. Like 

 (he Lower IVIississippi and all other rivers which are building up 

 rather than cutting down their beds, the Hwang is subject to fre- 

 quent floods and occasional shiftings of its channel. Its course be- 

 tween the mountains and the sea has thus been changed more than 



