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|02 THE ANALECTS : INTRODUCTION.
The principal river was the Yellow River, which ac-
cording to Dr. Chatmers' map in Dr. Legge's Ch'un
Ch'iu, emptied itself into the Gulf of Pechiti in the neigh-
bourhood of its present embouchure, north of the Shantung
Promontory. According to the map given in the g_
_., it debouched into the Yellow Sea south of the
Promontory, but this map was composed during the long
period when the river pursued its southerly course, and
what real evidence there is confirms Dr. Chalmers' view.
It is reasonable to believe that it was the north-western
arm of this great river which the Chinese pioneers struck
on their entry into China, and it is certain that along its
banks they had their early expansion. Hence to the
ancient Chinese it was par excellence The River, and to
them no other distinctive name was necessary. The
Yangtze was then but little known, as it ran through a
country for the most part unoccupied. Indeed the
smaller streams of northern and eastern China were of
greater importance than the mighty River whose magnitude
today dwarfs all others to comparative insignificance.
Of the smaller rivers the _/ei and its tributary the Ching
in Shensi, the Loh and Wei, and the tributaries of the
Han and HuM in Honan, the F_n and the Ch'in in Shansi,
the Chang in Chihli and the Chi in Shantung were
among the most important.
The unoccupied country was either a swamp, or covered
with forests in which tigers, leopards, bears and wolves,
probably also the rhinoceros, the elephant, various kinds
of saurians, and many other species of wild c?eatures,
some of them now extinct, found their habitation.