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PHYSICAL FEATURES CLIMATE. 133
Mongolian steppes and east of the Tibetan plateaux has naturally become the
domain of a united agricultural
nation.
The southern lands south of the two great twin rivers are less solidly united
with the rest of the empire. Here the mountains are more elevated than in the
heart of the country, and are grouped in a greater number of independent ridges,
running, not west and east, but mainly south-west and north-east. Nor can the
Si-kiang, the chief river of this region, be compared with the two main streams of
China, either in extent or in the facilities afforded by its lateral valleys for free
inland communication. Hence this portion of the empire constitutes a distinct
territory, more nearly allied physically
and ethnically with Further
India than with China proper. The
Southern Chinese differ widely from
those of the central and northern
regions, both in speech and customs,
and have within the historic period
frequently formed distinct political
systems.
In the eastern hemisphere China
corresponds with West Europe in its
climate, products, and historic development.
The mass of the land
doubtless lies much nearer to the
equator, for its northern frontier at
the eastern extremity of the Great
Wall is crossed by the 40th parallel,
like Mount Athos, Minorca, and
South Spain, while the whole coast
south of the Canton estuary lies
within the tropics. But the iso-
thermal lines, so to say, deflect China
proper northwards, imparting
to it a
relatively cold climate. Thus the
mean temperature of South England
and North France, about 50 Fahr.,
Fig. OO. ISOTHEHMALS OF CHINA.
Scale 1 : 45,000,000.
000 Miles.
answers to that of Peking and the Pei-ho valley. Shanghai corresponds in the same
__ way with Marseilles and Genoa, while the isothermal of 68 Fahr. intersects the
South Chinese seaboard, Andalusia, and the south of Portugal. The extremes,
however, are greater in China, which in this respect is thus at once a more
northern and a more southern region than temperate Europe. In the Old
as in the New World the climate of the east is severer than that of the west
coast, a fact due to the disposition of the oceanic basins, and to the rotation of the
earth from west to east. In Europe the conflicting atmospheric currents are those
of the pole and the tropical trade winds, which are deflected by the earth's motion,