Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/110

 — strings of asses laden with coal, mule-carts, litter-bearers, and scavengers pass along. In all the villages and towns full-grown men may be seen all day long on the roads, with a basket in one hand and a spade in the other, collecting animal dung, which is used for manuring the fields and for fuel.

Twenty miles from Kalgan, on the edge of the plain, stands the large town of Siuen-hwa-fu, surrounded, like all the Chinese towns, with a battlemented mud wall, like the Kitai-gorod at Moscow. After leaving it, the road enters the mountains, following a gorge through which flows the rapid and wide stream of the Yang-ho. In the narrower and more intricate parts of the defile the road is hewn out of the rocks, and it is altogether well adapted for wheeled conveyances. After passing the town of Tsi-ming, we again enter a plain, about nine miles wide, extending towards the west between two chains of mountains, one of which we have just crossed; the other, higher and far grander, forms the outer barrier of the second descent by which the table-land of Eastern Asia subsides into the plain which extends eastward to the Yellow Sea.

The elevation of the country between Kalgan and Chadau, which stands at the entrance to the last range of mountains, is very even, and the journey is continued over high land. At Chadau the descent of the second range, called Si-shan by the Chinese, begins. Like the Kalgan mountains, this