The geologic history of China and its influence upon the Chinese people / by Eliot Blackwelder.

  • Blackwelder, Eliot, 1880-1969.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The geologic history of China and its influence upon the Chinese people / by Eliot Blackwelder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/76 (page 385)
    FLUENCE UPON THE CHINESE PEOPLE.^ By Prof. Eliot Blackweldeb, University of Wisconsin. [With 9 plates.] The Chinese Empire includes an area larger than the United States with the addition of Alaska and our insular possessions. A large part of this vast area, however, is made up of dependencies which are but loosely joined to China proper, and are not essential to its in- tegrity. She has lost and regained these dependencies from time to time in the jiast, and the same process may continue. The accom- panying map will serve to show the relation of these component parts of the Empire to each other and to surrounding countries. Di\ested of its outlying possessions, China consists of 18 Provinces, which may be compared in a general w-ay to our States. The Provinces are, however, generally larger than the States and, on the whole, much more populous. There is still greater dissimilarity in government because, whereas our States are representative democ- racies, the Chinese Provinces were, at least until within a year or two, satrapies ruled absolutely by imperial governors or viceroys. Not a few people in America picture China as a vast fertile plain, perhaps like the upper Mississippi Valley, densely populated and in- tensively cultivated. In fact, however, it is so generally mountain- ous that less than one-tenth of its surface is even moderately flat. On the west, especially, it is ribbed with cordilleras from which its two great rivers, the Yangtze and the Hwang, flow eastward to the Pacific. In addition to this diversity of surface, there is also much variety of climate. In the northwest the conditions are dry and severe, like those of Montana and central Wyoming, while in the southeast they are humid and subtropical, approaching those of the Philippine Islands. Such are the extremes. 1 Reprinted by permission, with author's revision, from the Popular Science Monthly February, 1913. All of the larger photographs and some of the smaller ones were taken by Mr. Bailey Willis and are reproduced through the courtesy of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 44805“—SM 1913 25