Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/35

of the southern section flow into the Pearl River (Chu-kiang) and travel with it to the China Sea. These divisions are very unequal in size, the Yangtse being about as extensive as the other two combined: which comparison, however, must be regarded as only an approximation, no accurate survey having yet been made. The usual calculation is that in the Yangtse Valley are comprised seven provinces—Szchuan, Yunnan, Hupeh, Hunan, Anhwei, Kiangsi, and Kiangsu—which would make the area 607,000 square miles and the population 224 millions, leaving 729,841 square miles and 196 millions of population to the valleys of the Yellow River and the Pearl River combined.

From the point—the "Starry Sea" (Sing-suhhai), so called because of the glittering lakes that stud it—where the Yellow River rises near the southern slopes of the Celestial Mountains, to the point where it enters the Gulf of Pechili, the distance as the crow flies is some 1,300 miles, but the sinuosities of the river double the journey it makes from source to sea. During the first 1,100 miles of its travel from the hills the translucidity of its deep waters earns for it the title of "Black River;" but when it enters the province of Shansi—in other words, when it enters China proper, of which it has hitherto helped to form the northern boundary—its stream quickly becomes impregnated with the yellow soil (loess) of that singular region, and it thenceforth receives its familiar