86 RESEARCH IN CHINA. 
ITINERARY, 
I left Tientsin with Li-san on the 19th of December, taking the rail- 
road to Yin-k’6u (Niu-chuang). Leaving Yin-k’6u onthe 21st of December 
via the Chinese-Eastern (Russian) railroad, we reached the station of 
Pu-lan-tién (known on British charts as Port Adams) the following morn- 
ing. Here carts were obtained and a rapid journey begun toward the 
northwest, shifting to north and northeast. The road which we traveled 
passed through the villages of San-kua-miau, Ting-t’un, Wu-kia-tién, 
Ma-tién-tzi, and Ir-shi-li-p’u, to the city of Fu-chéu; thence it took a 
northeasterly direction through Yen-kia-tién, Tsau-kia-tién, Li-kuan-ts’un, 
and reached the railroad again at Siung-ytié-chéng. Arriving on the 
night of December 25th, we returned by rail from this station to Tientsin. 
The route followed will be seen to be almost identical with that 
traveled by von Richthofen, in the portion from Fu-chéu to Siung-ytié- 
chéng. Southof the former city, however, his road lay considerably to the 
southwest of ours, joining it again only at our starting point, Pu-lan-tién. 
GEOGRAPHIC FEATURES. 
East of the railroad there are rugged mountains with a relief of 2,000 
to 4,000 feet, 600 to 1,200 meters, in which igneous and metamorphic rocks 
evidently predominate. To the west, however, in the district studied, a 
low hill country or dissected upland stretches westward to the sea. 
Between Pu-lan-tién and Fu-chéu low hills of shale and sandstone, with 
occasional higher ridges containing quartzites and limestones, are more 
or less isolated from each other by broad sandy flats, most of which are 
the valleys of intermittent streams. To the south we saw low but precipi- 
tous mountains, apparently composed of limestone. From Fu-chéu to 
Li-kuan-ts’un there prevails an undulating upland of less than 200 feet, 
60 meters, relief, which marks the outcrop of the Yung-ning sandstone. 
Immediately north of Li-kuan-ts’un hard quartzites, with marble and 
schists, maintain a ridge 600 to 800 feet, 120 to 240 meters, high, beyond 
which the plain continues northward over deeply weathered igneous rocks. 
The peninsula of Liau-tung has the irregular and embayed valleys 
which are characteristic of a recently submerged land. The mountains 
east of the railroad are in advanced maturity in the present cycle of erosion. 
Their rugged peaks, like those of Shan-tung, fail to suggest any earlier 
cycles. The district lying to the west of the railroad is a low piedmont 
belt, sloping gently from the mountains to the sea. It also has reached 
advanced maturity in its erosion history. The valleys, which are broad 
and nearly flat-bottomed, lave been submerged at. their lower ends, allow- 
ing the sea in many cases to penetrate inland. The slackening of the 
