334 RESEARCH IN CHINA. 
Gorges of the Yang-tzi-kiang.—The gorges of the Yang-tzi-kiang have 
been too well described to require any statement in this place of their 
superb grandeur and imposing magnitude. Views on the Yang-tzi are 
more extended than those on the Ta-ning-ho, the canyon being several 
times as wide, and the relations of the different elements of the topography 
are more clearly observable. The bluffs and cliffs which bound the river 
vary greatly in altitude, according to the nature of the rocks, and in the 
red beds there are evidences of valley widening of which there is no trace 
in the limestones. It is evident that the powerful current of the Yang-tzi, 
one of the most efficient corrading engines of the world, has been able to 
expand the valley in these softer rocks repeatedly, while it was still sawing 
vertically in the harder ones. It is therefore in the red beds that we should 
look for the minor evidences of the river’s activity, since only the major 
ones are recorded in the limestone. But we could make no attempt in 
passing to note more than a greater widening of the valley, at an elevation 
of perhaps 600 feet, 180 meters, above the channel, than any which had 
occurred at the lower level. This episode is clearly marked in the area 
of the Huang-yang granite, which is now an extensive hill country of 
corresponding relief. 
The cliffs which wall the Yang-tzi gorges are sometimes sheer for 
2,000 feet, 600 meters, as estimated in passing. Above that altitude they 
recede in a decided bench, above which the mountains rise 2,000 to 3,000 
feet, 600 to 900 meters, higher. Itis probable that the level 3,000 feet, 900 
meters, above the river is the floor of the valley, which was occupied for 
some length of time prior to the last sinking of the canyon. Since the 
pause at that stage permitted the widening of the valley on the harder 
rocks, there was no doubt a far more extensive broadening upon the red 
beds and granite, but the valley floor on those rocks has been lowered many 
hundred feet, at least near the river, and the higher level, if it still survives 
on them, is to be seen only in the foothills of the adjoining mountains. 
The Yang-tzi is not only the master stream of the province, but one 
of the great master streams of the world. If we therefore infer that it is 
an ancient watercourse, which originated on the fluted surface when the 
red beds and Paleozoic strata were folded, we might expect that it would 
flow as far as possible in synclinal valleys, and would leave them only where 
adjacent anticlines are low. Its channel is indeed to some extent adjusted 
to the red beds, which are at once the softest and youngest rocks of the 
region; it appears to flow in a synclinal valley of this kind above K’ui- 
chéu-fu; it takes a similar course above Wu-shan-hién and again near 
K’ui-chéu-hién, Hu-pei. In certain other instances the river, having cut 
through the Carboniferous limestone, flows for some distance in a synclinal 
