Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/43

extreme western part slopes southward from the tableland of Thibet.

There are, of course, many minor streams not without importance locally and historically, but reference to them can be made more intelligibly in connection with the districts to which they belong.

China proper has not many lakes in proportion to its immense area. The principal Dongting Lake is Honan, a sheet of water some 220 miles in circumference under normal circumstances but swelled to very much larger dimensions when its northern shores are invaded by floods from the Yangtse. This lake is supposed to be a favourite abode of many of the spirits of Taoism, and the scenes of innumerable legends are laid on its shores or in its waters. There are evidences that the lake once formed part of an inland sea about two hundred miles long and eighty miles broad, through the middle of which the Yangtse flowed. Gradually this wide expanse of water was filled with silt carried down by the big river and its tributaries, until now only a small portion of its bed is under water. The silting-up process continues; for two rivers of considerable magnitude, the Yuen and the Siang, flow into the lake on the south, and before their waters reach the point of exit at Yochow on the northeast shore, whence they pass into the Yangtse, much of the silt they carry has been deposited, so that the lake grows steadily shallower.