ng is
described by Consul Oxenham as being now in a decayed and dilapidated
condition, consisting only of two long streets crossing at right angles. It
is noted for the manufacture of images of Buddha from Shan-si iron.
(_Consular Reports_, p. 10; _Erdmann_, 331.)

[The main road turns due west at Cheng-ting fu, and enters Shan-si through
what is known among Chinese travellers as the Ku-kwan, Customs'
Barrier.--H.C.]

Between Cheng-ting fu and T'ai-yuan fu the traveller first crosses a high
and rugged range of mountains, and then ascends by narrow defiles to the
plateau of Shan-si. But of these features Polo's excessive condensation
takes no notice.

The traveller who quits the great plain of Chihli [which terminates at
Fu-ch'eng-i, a small market-town, two days from Pao-ting.--H.C.] for "the
kingdom of Taianfu," i.e. Northern Shan-si, enters a tract in which
predominates that very remarkable formation called by the Chinese
_Hwang-tu_ and to which the German name _Loess_ has been attached. With this
formation are bound up the distinguishing characters of Northern Interior
China, not merely in scenery but in agricultural products, dwellings, and
means of transport. This _Loess_ is a brownish-yellow loam, highly porous,
spreading over low and high ground alike, smoothing over irregularities
of surface, and often more than 1000 feet in thickness. 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 o