At Taokou the inns were full of pilgrims coming many tons of miles tothe annual temple fair at Heinhsiin, thirty li to the north. This fair continues for fifteen days and seems to be attended by all the old women in the country, for.the roads were full of them in all directions. The streets of the city and the templed hillsides were thick with men and women. It is a great opportunity for the missionaries; they come from Changta and Weihui, rent " place for @ chapel, and live there through the days of the fair, preaching in several places to great throngs of people.
Early on the morning of the 12th March the Commission loaded its horses and baggage on the construction train at Taokou. Two superintendents of con-jon, Messrs. Ross and Pennycook, wore just returning to the other and of the line, after an evening party at Taokou; they made the journey comfortable and interesting for our party. They provided a flat car with railing on which to carry our ponies, and we had access to the special car they have fitted up for it own use. Itis simply a flat car with structure, about six by twelve foot, that would pass well for a Western "claim shanty" in the United States. Fitted with boys' store, table, chairs, etc., it was comfortable enough. The train. made ton or twelve miles an hour, which is about as fast as we found the construction train ever travel.
After leaving Taokou at 7 am. we reached Weilui, the department city, at 9.30 am., a run of thirty miles to the gr south-west. Not far beyond Weihui we passed through a sories of old dykes of the Yellow River, built to protect the city when the river was near there 300 years ago. Itis now forty or fifty miles further south. Continuing to the south-west slong the right bank of the Wei river, the railway runs through Hsinhsianghsien, forty-three miles, Kuochiahsien, fifty-six miles, Hiiiwuhsien and Tawangchen, seventy-five miles from Taokou. Between hsiang and Kuochiahsien, the Wei river is soon, a mere ditch, ten fet wide and not much further on it is " dry channel, the water being all drawn off for irrigation. Fifty miles below, or loss, it is navigable for house-boats or large junks. The road is completed only to Tawang, but the remaining eight miles to the mines are soon to be covered. Before reaching the present terminus the road leaves the Yellow River bed and enters the ground rising into the foothills, and the eight-mile horseback ride to the mines is through a fine loess deposit, irrigated by wells, covered with wheat fields, and dotted everywhere with persimmon trees. It is a beautiful, rolling country and must fair as a garden of the Lord in the summer and fall when fruits and grains are ripening.
The Company plans to extend the line beyond its coal-mines at Jamieson into what Richthofen calls the Garden Honan around Chingkuo, eight miles west. Thence following the gorge of the Tou River, they will reach Tsechou in Shansi, and perhaps Luan, tapping the iron as well.as the coal fields. A surveyor in speaking of the agricultural richness of the loess country to the west, said that in grading through one stretch they would have to destroy three hundred persimmon trees in one mile. This is the Tegion which produces bamboo, supplying the whole country for hundreds of li around.
We approached the mines by roads in which the loess soil was ground into impalpable dust by the many carts heavily laden with cement, iron-ware, stone, ote., for the mines. There was nothing to do but tramp our horses through it for the most part, as the deep gullies with perpendicular banks from six to thirty foot high made short cuts impracticable, Nearing the mines we saw the frosh red soil of the railway grade turned up in the midst of the green fields of winter wheat, These deep roads through this loess deposit furnish opportunity for investigating a fine problem in geology. Is this loess laid down by water or air? The roads cut through material having all the characteristics of the Shansi loess, perpendicular cleavage, sponge-like pores, fine rootlets or their fragmentary remains cave dwellings, ote. But thoro are also beds of coarse gravel and sand undoubtedly laid down in water with loess both above and below. In some cases a thin stratum of loess two or three inches thick was found betwoon two beds of gravel, the pores here id thoro lined with the bark of rootlets just as perfect as in the heavy beds of loess. This gravel beds wore pointed out as proof that it was all a. water deposit, i.e., loess from Shansi brought down and redeposited on the edge of the plain by water. Some shells were found in the loess, but they were land snails and we saw nothing to prove that oven here the loess is not air-deposited. Wo only need suppose that after a freshet depositing gravel, sufficient time elapsed for the wind to sift the fine dust on to the avd and for the grass to got a start, Probably a year would be enough time for the seeding and building up of the two or three-inch beds mentioned above.
We saw a village of cave dwellers in one ravine near the mines, and the men who are coming to get work are digging out their homes' in the banks of the stroams and roads near by. Some of these cave houses have four or five rooms connected, all ventilated and lighted usually through the front door only. The usual form was about eleven feot wide on the face of the cliff, extending back into the cliff about thirty fect; with an elliptical, arched ceiling six or seven foot high in the middle but only three or four foet high at the sides. The stove or cooking kettle is at the doorway so: that the smoke may have froe. exit; the bed of straw or a mat is at the rear, sometimes on the floor, sometimes ina niche in the wall, or in a bedroom: opening off at the side; sometimes the.dirt was left in a platform like the ordinary brick bed. These houses of one room, eleven by thirty by six fect high, can be dug out at a cost for labour of from four to eight dollars, They are therefore very chesp, as well as "cool in summer and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.