CHAPTER XV. 
PHYSIOGRAPHY OF SOUTHERN SHEN-SI. 
By BAILEY WILLIS. 
INTRODUCTION, 
The region to be described in the following pages is that mountainous 
district of central China lying south of latitude 34° on both sides of the 
meridian 109° W., and extending southward beyond the Yang-tzi, outside 
the range of our observations. On the east it is bounded by the lower 
valley of the Han river and westward it extends to the plateaus of Tibet. 
We entered the mountains from the Wei valley, about 50 miles west of 
Si-an-fu, near the town of Chéu-chi-hién, and crossed the Ts’in-ling-shan, 
a range from 7,000 to 12,250 feet, 2,100 to 3,735 meters, high and 100 
miles, 160 kilometers, wide, to the Han valley at Shi-ts’iian-hién. Thence 
we followed the river through a picturesque canyon to Hing-an-fu, a city 
located in a wider part of the valley above a lower canyon. At Hing- 
an-fu we left the Han-kiang and proceeded across several ridges and val- 
leys of a mountain mass, 175 miles, 280 kilometers, wide and 6,000 to 11,000 
feet, 1,800 to 3,350 meters, high, which from its main divide we shall call 
the Kiu-lung-shan, to the Yang-tzi-kiang. On the great river we took 
boats through the gorges to I-chang. 
In the course of this journey we crossed two geological provinces, 
which are distinguished by the character, though not by the age, of the 
rocks. The northern, which comprises the Ts’in-ling-shan and the valley 
of the Han, presents an area of schistose metamorphic rocks, which as a 
rule offer little resistance to erosion, but are traversed by occasional ledges 
of hard quartzite and intruded by large masses of granite, that maintain 
more or less conspicuous elevations. The southern geologic province, on 
the other hand, is characterized chiefly by limestones, with which are 
associated narrow belts of relatively soft shales. The limestones form 
great mountain ranges, across which the principal streams cut deep can- 
yons, but on the shales there are narrow longitudinal valleys. 
The major features of the region may be enumerated as follows: The 
northern mountains constitute two ranges, the Ta-hua-shan and the Ts’in- 
ling-shan, which lie en échelon, stretching east and west, south of the valley 
of the Wei. Their relations have already been discussed in connection 
with the structural geology of central Shan-si, in which the uplifted masses 
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