temple, Shao lin si, but there is no linguistically credible connection. Geography The Qin-Huai Line The Yellow River (Huang He) is the second-largest of China, the first being the Yangtze, which reaches to the east into Tibet (as does the Yellow). Its numerous tributaries on the way to the East China Sea just above Shanghai water a broad swathe called the Yangtze Delta. Its low-altitude matrix of streams supports the great mass of Chinese people, the most numerous on Earth. The Yellow River creates a second swathe just north of the Yangtze Delta. It is sometimes said to be in the Delta, but the Yangtze Valley and the Yellow River Valley, both running roughly E-W, are separated from each other by a divide. If it should be breached at any point then one river would capture the other upstream from the breach. Instead they are totally distinct. The Yellow exits into the Bohai Sea some north of Shanghai. The Yellow River descends from Gyaring Lake in the high plains of Tibet at an altitude of . The distance from the river mouth is . Lowland visitors run the risk of altitude sickness. The shallow lake collects muddy waters from the surrounding grassy plateau made of thick deposits of loess, a fine dust deposited by glacial winds in the remote past. Suspended loess stays in the water, imparting to the river the yellow color after which it is named. Deposition of this dust fills up the riverbed, resulting in course changes and extensive flooding. Frequent dams and reservoirs help control this formerly disastrous problem. The upper divide is the Qinling Range, a series of ridges trending roughly W-E, more exactly ESE, to the vicinity of Mount Song, which is considered to be in the range. Some consider Mount Song to be in the Funiu Mountains, another subrange of the Qinling, strictly speaking to the south of Mount Song. The distance of a N-S line drawn from the Yellow River at through Shaolin Monastery to the Yangtze River at its exit from Dongdongting Lake is about . The line enters the Yangtze River Valley at Nanyang, . The distance across the divide on that line is therefore . Songshan is on the northern slope of the divide, its south edge being higher than the north. The monastic communities are on its south slopes. East of Mount Song the divide is not as