SALT. 



166 



the same end would be attained by installing a modern hauling 

 plant in the various Hou-ching mines. 



Salt in the Yiin-lung Chou district. 



Yiin-lung Chou is a small unwaUed city situated in latitude 

 25° 48': longitude 99 ' JS\ at a height of 

 iujTw y rj - 500 feet abwe «ie sea, in the Ta-li Fu 



prefecture, hut under the immediate jurisdic- 

 tion of a small civil official, the Chou-Kuan. The city is built 

 in a narrow valley surrounded by steep, barren mountains so that 

 there is little ground under cultivation. A small river, the Lo- 

 raa Ho, a tributary of the Mekong, flows down the valley and 

 is crossed by a covered bridge. A weekly market is held, to which 

 the inhabitants of the surrounding villages congregate ; they are 

 chiefly Minchia and Minchia-Chinese and have a very poverty- 

 stricken appearance. The city appears to contain about 5,000 

 people, and owes its existence to the salt-wells in the environs. 

 Though at the present time the city must be classified amongst 

 the poorest in Yunnan, evidences are not wanting pointing to a 

 former prosperity when the brine-wells were more productive. 



I left Tengyiieh on 15th March 1909, and proceeded by the 



main easterly route as far as Yung-ping Hsien, 

 _J|outo and geology of & Stance q{ m ^^ ^.^ ^ ^^ 



on 22nd March. This is a small walled city 

 situated in a plain formed by the Yung-ping Ho, a tributary of 

 the Mekong. From Yung-ping Hsien the main road continues in 

 a north-easterly direction to Hsia-Kuan and Ta-li Fu, whilst the 

 route to Yiin-lung Chou proceeds in a north-westerly direction 

 from the city, which has an elevation of 5,300 feet. 



The whole of the country on this side of the Mekong, between 

 Yung-ping Hsien and Yiin-lung Chou. is made up of rocks of the 

 Eed Beds series of Pernio- Triassic age. There is reason to 

 suppose that they also stretch for considerable distances into the 

 unsurveyed areas to the north. Around Yung-ping Hsien, alluvial 

 deposits of the valley plain were met with, consisting of yellow 

 coarse-grained, friable sandstones, white, and brownish-white, fine- 

 grained shales with fragmentary plant remains and broken indeter- 

 minable Gasteropoda. In places thin bands of lignitic carbonace- 

 ous shales were seen. The road continues up the valley of the 

 Yung-ping Ho and after crossing the alluvial deposits, poor ex- 



