Page:China historical and descriptive.djvu/37

Rh at the south-west extremity of the Empire, and is bounded by Burmah. Its rugged surface is thickly covered with dense jungles, the habitat of elephants, tigers, and other large animals. This region is far more tropical in the nature of its climate and productions than the district east of it, and is considered by the Chinese unhealthy, owing to which less has been done than in any other part of the Empire to subject the soil to tillage.

Such are the principal natural divisions of China, and we now come to its rivers, which vie in number, length, and grandeur with the extent of the mighty country through which they flow. As this little volume cannot pretend to enter into geographical and topographical details, I shall content myself with saying that the water system of China is, perhaps, more perfect than that of any other country on the globe. Two of the largest rivers in the world flow through it, and with their affluents, aided by innumerable artificial canals and water-courses, leave scarcely any portion of the Empire capable of cultivation without the boon of irrigation and water-carriage.

The Hoang-ho, or Yellow River, rises in the mountainous region of Thibet, some twelve hundred miles in a straight line from its mouth in the Gulf of Pechili. I may here observe that in the generality of our maps it is represented as debouching to the southward of the Shan-tung promontory, but it has altered its course, and now flows into the Gulf of Pechili, taking a channel which is marked on the maps Ta-tsing-ho. This great river wanders north, east, south, and then east again for two thousand miles