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the control of the Colonial Department in Peking, the Begs being kept quiet by regular payments of salaries. The road crossing the eastern section of the Desert is 660 miles between Urga and Kalgan, and there are forty-seven posts along it. During certain seasons of the year this route is sufficiently watered to be clothed with grass, and the crow, the lark, and the sand-grouse abound, but the vegetation is stunted and the water in the small streams and lakes is brackish. "The whole of Gobi is regarded by Pumpelly as having formed a portion of a great ocean, which in comparatively recent geological times extended south to the Caspian and Black Seas and between the Ural and Inner Hing-an Mountains, and was drained off by an upheaval whose traces and effects can be detected in many parts." Clouds of sand and dust carried by the wind from these extensive deserts are supposed to have raised the plains of northwestern China several hundreds of feet in the lapse of ages.

China proper—that is to say, the area comprising the eighteen provinces—has three great rivers whose valleys may be said to form the three natural divisions of the Empire, if by valley be understood drainage basin. All the streams in the northern section are affluents of the Yellow River (Hwang-ho), which carries their waters into the Gulf of Pechili. All the streams of the central section similarly fall into the Yangtse, and are borne by it to the Eastern Sea; and a majority of the streams