262 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



to the unique plateau of Ch6ng-tu, the political capital of the 

 province. This plateau is our next step up from Chung-king, 

 and lies another 600 feet higher. Beyond this plain, famous 

 for its fertility and elaborate system of irrigation, which 

 spreads in a north-westerly and south-westerly direction, 

 ninety miles in length by forty in width, the mountains on 

 the west (the nearest conspicuous peak of which is the 

 famous, sacred, temple-covered 0-shan, or Mount Omi) rise 

 rapidly to a height of 22,000 feet and upwards, and form 

 the eastern bulwarks of the great Thibetan plateau beyond. 

 This alluvial plain of Cheng-tu, through which now flows a 

 network of clear streams- with gravelly beds, appears once to 

 have been a lake whose basin was gradually filled with the 

 boulders and coarser detritus from these western mountains. 

 Below this we have evidence of the great inland sea, that 

 probably in tertiary times occupied the now rugged country 

 of Eastern Szechuan, and in which the coal measures with 

 the superincumbent sandstones, of which the surface is now 

 composed, were deposited. At a subsequent period, as the 

 land rose, the surface of the former sea-bed must have 

 been gradually exposed to denudation, and the charmels of 

 the present rivers began to be cut out ; and if, as seems 

 probable, a dam then existed on the eastern borders of the 

 sea, it had not been broken through, nor had the gorges 

 through which the water subsequently escaped seawards then 

 been opened. Through and across this sandstone plain run, 

 at wide intervals, a succession of parallel ranges of limestone 

 mountains, all tending more or less in a north-north-east and 

 south-south-west direction, and rising to a height of two to 

 three thousand feet above the sea, forming the " cross ranges " 

 through which the Yang-tse and its affluents now break their 

 way in a series of magnificent gorges. The intervening 

 plateaux, originally level, except where tilted up against the 



