Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/31

 extremity of the Inshan mountains on the northern bank of the Hoang-ho. Thence they descended to Bautu, on the left bank of the river, and crossed into the dreary plains of the Ordos.

Their course lay now for nearly 300 miles westward, and parallel to the southern bank of the river, where it forms that great northern bend, familiar to all who have been in the habit of consulting maps of China. In all our maps the river is here represented as forming a variety of branches, but the main stream as constituting the most northerly of these. This bed still remains, but the river now flows in the most southerly of the channels, some thirty or forty miles farther south than it did in former times.

At the town of Ding-hu (called on former maps by the Mongol name Chaghan-subar-khan), the travellers crossed to the left bank of the Yellow River, and here they were in the province of Ala-shan, of which we have from Prejevalsky for the first time some distinct account. It forms a part of