26o Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



barriers, which fail to turn it aside from its steady progress 

 to the Eastern Sea. Owing to the circumstance of its 

 course being thus mainly in a direction transverse to the 

 higher ranges traversed by it, we find its channel thence down 

 to the point of its emergence in the plains of Hu-peh, to be 

 a series of zigzags, consisting of a succession of reaches 

 running at right angles to each other alternately S.W. 

 and N.E., and N.W. and S.E. In the former it runs in 

 comparatively open ravines, parallel to the radial axes of 

 the mountains enclosing it ; in the latter it breaks through 

 them in the magnificent clefts of the gorges. The strata in 

 these latter are for the most part horizontal, or only slightly 

 inclined, and it would appear that they are in part natural 

 splits in the rock, and in part gorges, formed purely by 

 erosion like that below the falls of Niagara. In some of 

 the gorges, and these spots naturally afford the most striking 

 views, the split takes a sharp rectangular turn such as is 

 only likely to occur in horizontal strata with vertical cleavage, 

 the absence of more extended denudation being very striking 

 and giving, I should say, unmistakable proof of their com- 

 paratively recent origin. The confused mountain mass, 

 which separates Hu-peh from Szechuan, commences a 

 short distance below Ichang, and extends to the city of 

 Kwei-chow, a distance of nearly 150 miles from east to 

 west. The radial axis of elevation appears to be a mass 

 of igneous rock, chiefly gneiss, traversed by dykes of 

 porphyry in vertical strata. These rocks have not been cut 

 through, but have been decomposed by the water, and their 

 debris now tower 'in Brobdingnagian stone-heaps, filling up 

 the desert-looking valley, which breaks the continuity of 

 the grand limestone gorges of Ichang and Nui-kan (Lukan 

 of Blakiston). The difficult piece of river, which rushes 

 on amidst these rock-piles, is known to the native boatmen 



