1850.
Topography of the Province of S':'chuen.
319
Yangtsz' kiáng. Near the junction of the Tátú and Min rivers is the
Ngo-mei shanor Fairy Eyebrow hill; north of it, about
娥眉山
fifty miles, is Mung shán; and north of Chingtú fú is Tsing- ching shan
or Green Citadel Mt. These are all the peaks
noted in the native maps, but the whole province is very hilly, and some of the summits rise almost to the limit of perpetual snow.
The rivers of Sz'chuen are so numerous that we can only enume- rate the largest oues, with their principal branches. The whole pro- vince lies in the basin of the Yangtsz' kiáng, which river forms a large part of its western and southern borders, and the others all flow into
it from the north. This great stream is called the Plutsu 布壘楚 after it enters the province in the northwest, until it passes into Yunnan, when it takes the name of the Kinshá kiáng, which it retains till it receives the river Min; from thence eastward it is called Tá kiáng or the Great River. The first affluent
★ of the Yangtsz' commencing in the west is the Wúliáng
T
or Measureless river, but why this name is given we know not; Li- táng, a town on the road from Tibet lies on its banks. The next is the Yálung kiáng, a large stream, whose headwaters are drawn from the Bayenkara Mts. in Koko-nor, between the Yellow river and the Yangtsz'; it joins the main trunk after a rapid course of more than a thousand miles, through a region very thinly peopled near where it reënters the province; the Ngan-ning ho
contri- butes its waters just above their confluence, but the Yalung receives few tributaries.
The R. Min
is the third large stream.
It rises in the north
of the province in two principal branches, the Tátú and Min, which
together drain the centre of the province in a course of about 700
miles; the upper part of the former is called the Tá Kin-chuen 川,
↑
or Great Gold stream; it joins the Min at Kisting, and their unit- ed waters enter the Yángtsz' at Süchau fú. Proceeding eastward, the next river is the R. Loh, which carries off the superfluous waters of the districts between the Pei and Min rivers ; it is about 300 miles long. The fifth large river is formed by the union of the Pei the Kiáling and the Kii, whose numerous branches afford access to most of the towns in the eastern parts of the province, some of the sources rising in Kánsuh over 800 miles from the junction with the Yangtsz' at Chungking fű. Besides these five principal streanis in Sz'chuen, there are twenty other small tributaries of the Great river mentioned on the Chinese maps, but hardly one of them is over a hun- dred miles in length.