1901, Archibald John Little, “From Kiating Back to Chungking”, in Mount Omi and Beyond: A Record of Travel on the Thibetan Border[1], London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, page 227:
Suifu, as it is universally called, or Hsu Chow Fu, as it is officially designated, is most advantageously situated at the junction of the two great rivers, the Min and the Kin Sha ("Gold Sand"), which here unite and form the mighty Yangtze.
From the Chien Chang valley through which flows the An Ning river on the east, to the Tibetan frontier on the west, and from Ta Chien Lu on the north to the Kin Sha river (or river of golden sand) on the south, there is a stretch of country having an area of 40,000 square miles that is without doubt richer in mineral wealth than any other part of China, and one of the most highly mineralized spots in the whole world.
Very little was known about the geography of the Southwest until the time of Hsu Hsia-keh, who visited that area towards the close of the Ming Dynasty. It was only then that people came to know that the Kin Sha River was in fact the upper course of the Yangtze River and that the Red River, the Mekong and the Salween flowed into the South China Sea separately.
