The Loess Country and the Ydlow River 269 



thus indicated beyond, may prove another California in the 

 world-supply of the yellow metal. 



The outline sketch will show how much has still to be 

 observed in this wide region. China, though partially 

 ransacked by many explorers, is still but little appreciated by 

 scientific writers in Europe, as is evident from the way its 

 teachings are ignored in the common generalizations of 

 science. It was left for Richthofen to show, by his examina- 

 tion of the great loess country of the north-west, the possi- 

 bility of aerial influences modifying the earth's surface in a 

 way that was hitherto thought to be only possibe to water. 

 Another instructive field of study is opened by the recurring 

 droughts with which the province of Shansi, once the granary 

 of the empire, in now afflicted. The change that is going 

 on before our eyes in the Yellow River, second only in size 

 and importance to the Yang-tse itself, is another problem 

 which upsets many of our preconceived notions in hydro- 

 graphy. Here we have a vast river, historically of far 

 greater interest than the Yang-tse, flowing along a bed con- 

 siderably higher than that of the country it should naturally 

 drain — a river that little more than thirty years ago shifted 

 its mouth to a point 300 miles northward, and in one sum- 

 mer deserted the Yellow Sea for the Gulf of Pechili, silting 

 up the Port of Tientsin, and rapidly converting the gulf into 

 an agricultural plain. Railway projectors talk glibly of rail- 

 ways in every direction, and draw their "air" lines with 

 equal facility across the crumbUng loess terraces of the 

 north and the unbroken series of precipitous mountains 

 and deep-cut gorges of the west. Yet who knows how far 

 our Western railways unmodified will answer in such a 

 coimtry ? 



Not alone physical problems, but others, social, political, 

 and ethical, present themselves upon a closer study of the 



