It Has No
Stratification, But Tends To Cleave Vertically, And Is Traversed In Every
Direction By Sudden Crevices, Almost Glacier-Like, Narrow, With Vertical
Walls Of Great Depth, And Infinite Ramification.
Smooth as the loess basin
looks in a bird's-eye view, it is thus one of the most impracticable
countries conceivable for military movements, and secures extraordinary
value to fortresses in well-chosen sites, such as that of Tung-kwan
mentioned in Note 2 to chap.
Xli.
Agriculture may be said in N. China to be confined to the alluvial plains
and the loess; as in S. China to the alluvial plains and the terraced
hill-sides. The loess has some peculiar quality which renders its productive
power self-renewing without manure (unless it be in the form of a surface
coat of fresh loess), and unfailing in returns if there be sufficient rain.
This singular formation is supposed by Baron Richthofen, who has studied it
more extensively than any one, to be no subaqueous deposit, but to be the
accumulated residue of countless generations of herbaceous plants combined
with a large amount of material spread over the face of the ground by the
winds and surface waters.
[I do not agree with the theory of Baron von Richthofen, of the almost
exclusive Eolian formation of loess; water has something to do with it as
well as wind, and I think it is more exact to say that loess in China is
due to a double action, Neptunian as well as Eolian. The climate was
different in former ages from what it is now, and rain was plentiful and to
its great quantity was due the fertility of this yellow soil. (Cf. A. de
Lapparent, Lecons de Geographie Physique, 2'e ed. 1898, p. 566.) - H.C.]
Though we do not expect to find Polo taking note of geological features, we
are surprised to find no mention of a characteristic of Shan-si and the
adjoining districts, which is due to the loess; viz. the practice of
forming cave dwellings in it; these in fact form the habitations of a
majority of the people in the loess country. Polo has noticed a similar
usage in Badakhshan (I. p. 161), and it will be curious if a better
acquaintance with that region should disclose a surface formation analogous
to the loess. (Richthofen's Letters, VII. 13 et passim.)
NOTE 2. - Taianfu is, as Magaillans pointed out, T'AI-YUAN FU, the capital
of the Province of Shan-si, and Shan-si is the "Kingdom." The city was,
however, the capital of the great T'ang Dynasty for a time in the 8th
century, and is probably the Tajah or Taiyunah of old Arab writers. Mr.
Williamson speaks of it as a very pleasant city at the north end of a most
fertile and beautiful plain, between two noble ranges of mountains. It was
a residence, he says, also of the Ming princes, and is laid out in Peking
fashion, even to mimicking the Coal-Hill and Lake of the Imperial Gardens.
It stands about 3000 feet above the sea [on the left bank of the
Fen-ho.
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