- H.C.]

NOTE 2.

- Polo's journey now continues through the lofty mountainous region in the north of Sze-ch'wan.

The dividing range Ta-pa-shan is less in height than the T'sing-ling range, but with gorges still more abrupt and deep; and it would be an entire barrier to communication but for the care with which the road, here also, has been formed. But this road, from Han-chung to Ch'eng-tu fu, is still older than that to the north, having been constructed, it is said, in the 3rd century B.C. [See supra.] Before that time Sze-ch'wan was a closed country, the only access from the north being the circuitous route down the Han and up the Yang-tz'u. (Ibid.)

[Mr. G.G. Brown writes (Jour. China Br. R. As. Soc. xxviii. p. 53): "Crossing the Ta-pa-shan from the valley of the Upper Han in Shen-si we enter the province of Sze-ch'wan, and are now in a country as distinct as possible from that that has been left. The climate which in the north was at times almost Arctic, is now pluvial, and except on the summits of the mountains no snow is to be seen. The people are ethnologically different.... More even than the change of climate the geological aspect is markedly different. The loess, which in Shen-si has settled like a pall over the country, is here absent, and red sandstone rocks, filling the valleys between the high-bounding and intermediate ridges of palaeozoic formation, take its place.

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