CHINA, MONGOLIA, AND JAPAN. 67 



CHAPTEE VII.i 



THE SINIAN= SYSTEM OF ELEVATION. 



I HAVE taken the liberty of giving this name to that extensive N. E. S. W. sys- 

 tem 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 con- 

 sider the hydrography, the courses of the mountains,^ or the strike of the strata. 



In crossing the plateau of Mongolia 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 ap- 

 plied to all of the eastern part of this vast region. The Yablonoi, Altan-kingan, and 

 Stanovoi mountains, with all their intermediate, parallel ridges, that together form 

 tlie valley network of the upper Lena and Amur rivers, are instances of the develop- 

 ment 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 Ivin- 

 gan mountains — the eastern edge of the great plateau — and in the continuation of 

 the Stanovoi in the far northeast,, 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 any- 

 thing more recent than the Chinese Coal measures aff'ected by this uplift, and as, 

 to the extent of my knowledge, no younger rocks are affected by it in Siberia,* 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 for- 

 mation of the great bed of limestone. 



» See Map, PI. Y. 



^ 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. 

 * The explorations of M. TchihatchefiF, 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. 



