206 RESEARCH IN CHINA. 
valley of a stream, which formerly flowed to the Sha-ho and possibly across 
the position of that stream southwestward. 
The mountains of the Ning-shan district form a striking example 
of the complete adjustment of the topographic features of this region to 
the hard and soft rocks. The district is bounded along its northwestern 
side by normal faults, with downthrow to the southeast. If this faulting 
were still effective in determining existing relative altitudes, the Ning-shan 
area would be depressed and the region northwest of it relatively elevated. 
The reverse is the case. The limestone peaks, which are on the down- 
thrown block, overtop the district of gneiss on the northwestern, upthrown 
block by 500 feet or more, and the sunken syncline of Paleozoic limestones 
stands out as an elevated peninsula, between the alluvial plain on the 
southeast and an extensive area of low hills on the northwest. Never- 
theless, the streams which rise among those low hills flow directly across 
the belt in which the summit altitudes are greater. 
Bad lands of the Sha-ho.*—The Ning-shan district ends just east of 
Wang-k’uai-ch6n, and thence, westward to Féu-p’ing-hién, the Sha-ho flows 
through a deeply eroded hill country of gneiss. The map scarcely suggests 
the intricacy of the little ravines, which branch in every direction from the 
deeply sunken channel of the Sha-ho into the uplands. The photograph 
(Fig. A, Plate III), taken from the summit of the high hill east of Féu-p’ing, 
looking north by east, more graphically expresses the character of the region 
than can any description. The country is a ‘“‘bad lands,” having a relief 
of 300 to 1,000 feet, 240 to 300 meters, above the streams, with a general 
uniformity of hilltops and a monotonous similarity among thousands of 
short ravines. The rock in which the relief is sculptured is a gneiss of 
generally uniform texture and presents no differences of resistance to 
eroding activities. The general level of the summits probably corresponds 
to a plain of erosion, developed, it may be, by the Sha-ho at an earlier 
stage, or possibly by a stream older than the Sha-ho which flowed south 
by west along the belt of relatively soft gneiss. In the latter case the 
Sha-ho tapped and diverted the older stream, and the drainage assumed 
a course nearly at right angles to that which it previously had. 
Mountains west of Fou-p’ing-hién.t{—The foothills west of the great 
plain may be said to extend as far as Féu-p’ing-hién. Up to that point the 
general elevation is not much above 1,000 feet, 300 meters, and the isolated 
heights do not attain an altitude of more than 2,000 feet. A high peak is 
the hill east of Féu-p’ing-hién, 1,900 feet, 580 meters, which is capped by 
siliceous limestone. It is an outpost of the western mountains, and just 
* Atlas sheet E I. 
} Atlas sheets E I and DI. 
