On looking at the map more closely it will be seen that where the Hwang-Ho descends from the highlands on to the plain it receives a tributary, the Wei—or " clear " river, which has a valley deeply trenched into the surrounding plateau. This valley was the nursery of Chinese civilization, where the first Chinese Adam used his spade, as did his Egyptian and Chaldean brothers, not only to dig but to ditch. Protected it was to a certain considerable extent by the surrounding semi-desert con ditions, and here, as in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the seasonal variation of summer and winter is most marked, while extremes of heat and cold, though more marked than in Egypt and Chaldea, are not too trying. Water is not too plentiful, and none can be wasted. There is protection with a certain stimulus to use brains, to make the most of a situation which has natural energy neither too great to overpower man nor too scanty to be used. It is not accident that in latitude the beginnings of civilization have first appeared in widely separated districts on the earth's surface.
But if the beginnings of Chinese civilization were of the same character as and controlled by circumstances similar to those of Western civilization, it has shown different characteristics and developed in a different way. It would perhaps be more correct to say that Chinese civilization has continued to develop on the original lines all through its history, whereas Western civilization has been influenced, as we have seen, first by one factor and then by another.
The difference in site is largely responsible. In Egypt the land available for settlement is small, with very definite limits. Even the land bordering the Euphrates and Tigris available for a young state, though larger, is not very extensive. This is perhaps an advantage to a primitive race. In China, however, the Wei Valley, with its continuation the middle Hwang-Ho, opens out into one of the most fertile deltaic plains in the world. Here was a larger field to be occupied by settlers, or to be civilized if already occupied, when the available space in their original land became too small. There was no need to change occupation ; there was no other area with which trade might take place ; there was no " way " by which other conditions could be set up. The delta required only the same kind of civilization, but slightly modified to make the most of the swampy land through which natural channels, continually changing, took the water to the sea.
This is the original China; here men probably existed in prehistoric times, before there appeared even the dawnings of the civilization we are considering. Here, and perhaps to the southward, there lived men whose descendants, having given place before the advance of a superior race, are found in the more inaccessible mountain districts of the south-west; men who very probably form the rootstock of the present Chinese, the stock on which have been engrafted many other related branches. To this original China — the yellow land, yellow with the loess of the Western steppe; watered by the Yellow River, yellow with mud, flowing to the Yellow Sea, yellow from the same cause—up to within two centuries of the Christian era Chinese civilization was confined, slowly perfecting for 2000 to 3000 years methods of spade culture and irrigation which to this day are characteristic of the race.
But why were the Chinese so confined to the north of what we know as China ? That the sea should have been a barrier in front was most natural before the arrival of an ocean age ; that the plateau should not have tempted them back to its wildernesses is equally natural ; the northern lands, reached through the narrow strip of low ground—narrower then than now—between mountain and sea, were not at first more attractive than the plateau. But why should they not have gone south ? The reason lies in the fact that central and south China, the basins of the Yangtse-Kiang and the Si-Kiang, have a, different character from the basin of the Hwang-Ho. A map shows that they are hilly, in some parts even mountainous, and specially it should be noticed that just south of the Wei and middle Hwang-Ho is a range of mountains, the Tsin-ling. This range and its continuation eastward were for long ages clothed with forest which did not tempt the agricultural Chinese till the plain was reaching a limit to its capacity. Not only was the mountain forest-covered, but all the lands south ward. thanks to a warmer and moister -climate, were covered with a jungle growth, and had to be slowly cleared ere any organized settlement was possible.
It was only towards the close of the third century B.C. that the first real attempt was made to extend Chinese rule over these districts, though Chinese settlers must for long have been slowly extending Chinese civilization southwards. The process was not completed for a century or two longer, but it is worth noting that the first attempt to rule effectively over the south was made by the short-lived dynasty of Tsin, from whose name we get the name by which we now speak of the land— China. The process was, however, left to be practically completed under a dynasty which ruled during the two centuries preceding and the two centuries succeeding the Christian era, and after whom the Northern Chinese still call themselves the " men of Han." But, again, how was it that, if South China is so different from the North, Chinese civilization was able, however slowly, to make South China one with the North ? How is it that China was, and is, so homogeneous ? The south is hilly, but it is well provided with rivers and river valleys—rivers that have a constant flow, though owing to the monsoon system of rains they have a seasonal variation in volume. The problems connected with irrigation and agriculture generally are somewhat more complex, but they are not different from those in the north, and the hill-sides can bear cultivation to a greater height than would be possible farther north, so that the same kind of civilization is possible; and, with a 3000-year experience of agriculture and irrigation work behind them, the geographical momen tum was so strong that the Northern Chinese easily overcame what might appear even serious difficulties.