Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/117

Rh. Roads are plentiful, and so the cart and the wheel-barrow are the principal vehicles for through traffic.

This is one of the few parts of China where boats can be but little used. The streams are shallow and full of sand bars, and on account of the pronounced wet and dry seasons many of them are intermittent. For these reasons the majority of them are not navigable. The deeply eroded land of Shan-tung has, however, suffered a relatively recent

movement—apparently a sinking of the land—which has allowed the ocean to penetrate the mouths of many of the coastal valleys. This marginal drowning has produced some excellent harbors—such as that of Chee-fu, the great silk port, and Tsing-tau, the German stronghold. On the west, and encircling the Shantung hills, lies the great plain of the Huang-ho or Yellow River, which will serve as the type of many much smaller plains in various parts of China. As explained before, this vast gently sloping plain has been built by the Yellow River and some of its tributaries in an effort to preserve a uniform gradient across