Chinese was the comparatively small region above mentioned. It was
then a tract of an irregular oblong shape, lying between latitude 34°
and 40° N. and longitude 107° and 114° E. This territory round the
elbow of the Yellow River had an area of about 50,000 square miles,
and was gradually extended to the sea-coast on the north-east as far as
longitude 119°, when its area was about doubled. It had a population of
perhaps a million, increasing with the expansion to two millions. This
may be called infant China. Its period (the Feudal Period) was in
the two thousand years between the twenty-fourth and third centuries
B.C. During the first centuries of the Monarchical Period, which lasted
from 221 B.C. to A.D. 1912, it had expanded to the south to such an
extent that it included all of the Eighteen Provinces constituting
what is known as China Proper of modern times, with the exception of
a portion of the west of Kansu and the greater portions of Ssuch'uan
and Yünnan. At the time of the Manchu conquest at the beginning of the
seventeenth century A.D. it embraced all the territory lying between
latitude 18° and 40° N. and longitude 98° and 122° E. (the Eighteen
Provinces or China Proper), with the addition of the vast outlying
territories of Manchuria, Mongolia, Ili, Koko-nor, Tibet, and Corea,
with suzerainty over Burma and Annam--an area of more than 5,000,000
square miles, including the 2,000,000 square miles covered by the
Eighteen Provinces. Generally, this territory is mountainous in the
west, sloping gradually down toward the sea on the east. It contains
three chief ranges of mountains and large alluvial plains in the north,
east, and south. Three great and about thirty large rivers intersect
the country, their numerous tributaries reaching every part of it.

As regards geological features, the great alluvial plains rest upon
granite, new red sandstone, or limestone. In the north is found the
peculiar loess formation, having its origin probably in the accumulated