188 ACROSS MONGOLIAN PLAINS 



fore visited the north. He began to realize what every 

 one soon learns who wanders much about the Middle 

 Kingdom — ^that it is never safe to generalize in this 

 strange land. Conditions true of one region may be 

 absolutely unknown a few hundred miles away. He 

 was continually irritated to find that his perfect knowl- 

 edge of the dialect of Fukien Province was utterly use- 

 less. He was well-nigh as helpless as though he had 

 never been in China, for the languages of the north and 

 the south are almost as unlike as are French and Grer- 

 man. Even our "boys" who were from Peking had some 

 diificulty in making themselves understood, although 

 we were not more than two hundred miles from the 

 capital. 



Instead of hills thickly clothed with sword grass, here 

 the slopes were bare and brown. We were too far north 

 for rice; corn, wheat, and kaoliang took the place of 

 paddy fields. Instead of brick-walled houses we found 

 dwellings made of clay like the "adobe" of Mexico and 

 Arizona. Sometimes whole villages were dug into the 

 hillside and the natives were cave dwellers, spending 

 their lives within the earth. 



All north China is spread with loess. During the 

 Glacial Period, about one hundred thousand years ago, 

 when in Europe and America great rivers of ice were 

 descending from the north, central and eastern Asia 

 seems to have suifered a progressive dehydration. There 

 was little moisture in the air so that ice could not be 

 formed. Instead, the climate was cold and dry, while 

 violent winds carried the dust in whirling clouds for 



