Untitled

190
EAST ASIA.
Shansi, Kansu, half of Shensi, the northern division of Honan, and extensive tracts
in Shantung. This formation, comprising a France, reaches in some places even to the
region larger than the whole of
banks of the Yang-tze, and stretches
westwards to the Tibetan plateaux.
In these is
regions everything yellow hills,
fields, highways, houses, the very torrents and streams charged with alluvia.
Even the is
vegetation
often covered with a yellow veil, while every puff
of wind
raises clouds of fine dust. From these lands the Emperor himself takes the title of
Hoang-ti, or " Yellow Lord," equivalent to " Master of the World." According
EofG.
pig. 87. YELLOW LANDS OP NOBTH CHINA.
Scale 1 : 18,000,000.
Alluvium. Yellow Lands. Red Alluvinm. Palteozoie. Metamorphic. Volcanic. Carboniferous
-^^^ _^_ 300 Miles.
to Richthofcn, the hoang-tu, regarded by him as a formation analogous to the loess
of the Rhine and Danube basins, is nothing more than so much dust accumulated
during the course of ages by the northern Avinds. In any
1C'
case it cannot be of
glacial origin, for, instead of being simply heaped up like the moraine deposits, it is
pierced by vertical holes ramifying in various directions, and caused by the stems
and roots of plants gradually covered by the dust. Nor is the hoang-tu deposited
in layers like the alluvia of running waters, while it is destitute of marine fossils-
attesting a possible submersion of the land under the ocean.