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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
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OPEN-AIR THEATER AT HSING CHANG, NEAR KUAN 
Photo by Rollin T. Chamberlin 
HSIEN 
The actors are doing their best to hold the attention of the audience, but the audience is 
vastly more interested in the American photographer, who slipped up quietly with the hope of 
getting a picture of the performers on the stage. 
stratigraphic succession. This sharp 
change in the formation is rendered con- 
spicuous by a right-angled bend in the 
river. For perhaps five miles above the 
river flows along the strike of the soft 
layer in a northeasterly direction because 
of its easy erosion, but on encounterinz 
the hard frontal strata it turns sharply 
across them. 
Our purpose being to penetrate into 
the mountains as far as possible in the 
brief time available to see what we could 
of the structure of the ranges, the jour- 
ney along the strike was far from wel- 
come ; but we could only follow the river, 
for the back country is extremely rugged 
and can be traversed only with much 
difficulty. Close to the river bend the 
tunnels of three coal mines penetrate the 
| canyon wall. 
The average thickness of 
the coal seam in the three mines is said 
to be only about a foot and a half. Just 
beyond the river bend are large lime 
kilns. The natives were also seen to be 
washing the river sands for gold. 
Beyond the great bend in the river we 
followed a winding hillside path, now 
high above the rushing stream, now 
down near the water for most of the af- 
ternoon. The river was found to follow 
the strike rather closely, shifting from 
one set of weak layers to others as ad- 
vantage offered. The left mountain wall 
is formed of a great rock face of gray 
metamorphosed limestone standing in 
steep beds, which are even overturned so 
as to dip toward the northwest. Speci- 
mens of the genus Productus, found in 
