The travel between Shensí and Sz’chuen is almost wholly confined to the great road reaching from Sí-ngan to Chingtu. It passes along the River Wei to Hienyang hien on the left bank, where the road north into Kansuh diverges, the other continuing west along the river through a populous region to Paokí hien, where it recrosses the Wei. During this portion, the Tai-peh Mountain, about eleven thousand feet high, with its white summit, adds a prominent feature to the scenery. At Paokí, the crossing at the Tsingling shan commences, and occupies seven days of difficult travel through a devious road of 163 miles to Fung hien on the confines of Kansuh. It crosses successive ridges from 6,000 to 9,000 feet high, and is carried along the sides of hills and down the gorges in a manner reflecting much credit on the engineers of the third century A.D. who made it. These mountainous regions are thinly settled all the way down to Paoching, near Hanchung; but upon gaining the River Han, one of the most beautiful and fertile valleys in China is reached. Its western watershed is the Kiu-tiao shan,[73] running southwesterly into Sz’chuen on the west side of the Kialing River.
SÍ-NGAN ITS CAPITAL.
The city of Sí-ngan is the capital of the northwest of China, and next to Peking in size, population, and importance. It surpasses that city in historical interest and records, and in the long centuries of its existence has upheld its earlier name of Chang-an, or ‘Continuous Peace.’ The approach to it from the east lies across a bluff, whose eastern face is filled with houses cut in the dry earth, and from whose summit the lofty towers and imposing walls are seen across the plain three miles away. These defences were too solid for the Mohammedan rebels, and protected the citizens while even their suburbs were burned. The population occupies the entire enciente, and presents a heterogeneous sprinkling of Tibetans, Mongols and Tartars, of whom many thousand Moslems are still spared because they were loyal. Sí-ngan has been taken and retaken, rebuilt and destroyed, since its establishment in the twelfth century B.C. by the Martial King, but its position has always assured for it the control of trade between the central and western provinces and Central Asia. The city itself is picturesquely situated, and contains some few remains of its ancient importance, while the neighborhood promises better returns to the sagacious antiquarian and explorer than any portion of China. The principal record of the Nestorian mission work in China, the famous tablet of A.D. 781, still remains in the yard of a temple. Some miles to the northwest lies the temple Ta-fu-sz’, containing a notable colossus of Buddha, the largest in China, said to have been cut by one of the Emperors of the Tang in the ninth century. This statue is in a cave hewn out of the sandstone rock, being cut out of the same material and left in the construction of the grotto. Its height is 56 feet; the proportions of limbs and body of the sitting figure are, on the whole, good, the Buddha being represented with right hand upraised in blessing, and the figure as well as garments richly covered with color and gilt. Before the god stand two smaller colossi of the Schang-hoa, Buddha’s favorite disciples; their inferior art and workmanship, however, testify to a later origin. The cave is lighted from above, after the manner of the Pantheon, by a single round opening in the vaulting. Sixty feet over the rock temple rises a tile roofing, and upon the hillside without the cavern are a number of minor temples and statues.[74]
Next to this city in importance is Hanchung, near the border of Sz’chuen; it was much injured by the Tai-pings, and is only slowly recovering, like all the towns in that valley which were exposed; none of these rebels crossed the Tsingling Mountains. Yu-lin (‘Elm Forest’) is an important city on the Great Wall in the north of Shensí, the station of a garrison which overawes the Mongols. Several marts carrying on considerable trade are on or near the Wei and Han Rivers.
Gold mines occur in Shensí, and gold is collected in some of the streams; other metals also are worked. The climate is too cold for rice and silk; wheat, millet, oats, maize, and cotton supply their places; rhubarb, musk, wax, red-lead, coal, and nephrite are exported. The trade of Sí-ngan is chiefly that of bartering the produce of the eastern provinces (reaching it by the great pass of Tung-kwan) and that from Tibet, Kansuh, and Ílí. Wild animals still inhabit the northern parts, and the number of horses, sheep, goats, and cattle raised for food and service is large compared with eastern China.
KANSUH PROVINCE.
The immense province of Kansuh (i.e., Voluntary Reverence, made by uniting the names of Kanchau fu and Suh chau) belonged at one time to Shensí, and extended no farther west than Kiayü kwan; but since the division by Kienlung, its limits have been stretched across the desert to the confines of Songaria on the northwest, and to the borders of Tibet on the west. It is bounded north and northeast by Gobi and the Dsassaktu khanate, east by Shensí, south by Sz’chuen, southwest by Koko-nor and the desert, and northwest by Cobdo and Ílí. Its entire area cannot be much under 400,000 square miles, the greater part of which is a barren waste; it extends across twelve degrees of latitude and twenty-one degrees of longitude, and comprises all the best part of the ancient kingdom of Tangut, which was destroyed by Genghis.
The topography of this vast region is naturally divided into two distinct areas by the Kiayü kwan at the end of the Great Wall; one a fertile, well-watered, populous country, differing toto cœlo from the sandy or mountainous wildernesses of the other. The eastern portion is further partitioned into two sections by the ranges of mountains which cross it nearly from south to north in parallel lines, dividing the basins of the Wei and Yellow Rivers near the latter. The passage between them is over the Făn-shui ling, not far from the Tao ho and by the town of Tihtao, leading thence up to Lanchau. This part of the province, watered by the Wei, resembles Shansí in fertility and productions, and its nearness to the elevated ranges of the Bayan-kara induces comparatively abundant rainfall. The streams in the extreme south flow into Sz’chuen, but furnish few facilities for navigation. The affluents of the Yellow River are on the whole less useful for irrigation and navigation, and the four or five which join it near Lanchau vary too much in their supply of water to be depended on.
The peculiar feature of Kansuh is the narrow strip projecting like a wedge into the Tibetan plateau, reaching from Lanchau northwesterly between the Ala shan and Kílien shan to the end of the Great Wall. This strip of territory commands the passage between the basin of the Tarim River and Central Asia and China Proper; its passage nearly controls trade and power throughout the northern provinces. The Ta-tung River flows on the south of the Kílien Mountains, but the travel goes near the Wall, where food and fuel are abundant, a long distance beyond its end—even to the desert. The roads from Sí-ngan to Lanchau pass up the King River to Pingliang and across several ranges, or else go farther up the River Wei to Tsin chau; the distances are between 500 and 600 miles. From Lanchau one road goes along the Yellow River down to Ninghia, a town inhabited chiefly by Mongols. Another leads 90 miles west to Síning, whither the tribes around Koko-nor repair for trade. The most important continues to Suhchau, this being an easier journey, while its trade furnishes employment to denizens of the region, whose crops are taken by travellers on passage; this road is about 500 miles in length. Its great importance from early days is indicated by the erection of the Great Wall, in order to prevent inroads along its sides, and by the fortress of Kiayü, which shuts the door upon enemies.
The climate of Kansuh exhibits a remarkable contrast to that of the eastern provinces. Prejevalsky says it is damp in three of the seasons; clear, cold winds blowing in winter, and alternating with calm, warm weather; out of 92 days up to September 30, he registered 72 rainy days, twelve of them snowy. The highest temperature was 88° F. in July. Snow and hail also fall in May. North of the Ala shan, which divides this moist region from the desert, everything is dry and sandy; their peaks attract the clouds, which sometimes discharge their contents in torrents, and leave the northern slopes dry; a marsh appears over against and only a few miles from a sandy waste.[75]