154 Baron Humboldt on the Mountain-chains and 



rated, and from it sal-ammoniac is obtained in the form of small 

 lumps like sugar, of extreme whiteness, and perfect purity." 



Pechan and the volcano of Ho-tcheou or Tufan are 140 

 leagues apart, in the direction of east and west. About forty 

 leagues westward of the meridian of Ho-tcheou, at the foot of the 

 gigantic Bokhda-ula, is the great solfatara of Ouroumtsi. At 

 140 leagues north-west of this, in a plain adjoining the banks of 

 the Kobok, which flows into the small lake of Darlai, rises a 

 hill, " the clefts of which are very warm, though they do not 

 exhale smoke (visible vapours) : the sal-ammoniac, in these cre- 

 vices is sublimed into so solid a coating, that the stone is obliged 

 to be broken in order to get it/' 



^ These four places hitherto known, namely, Pechan, Ho- 

 tcheou, Ouroumtsi, and Kobok, which exhibit evident volcanic 

 phenomena, in the interior of Asia, are 130 or 140 leagues to 

 the south of the point of Chinese Zungaria, where I was at the 

 beginning of 1829. Aral-toube, the conical and insular moun- 

 tain of Lake Ala-kul, which has been in a state of ignition in 

 historical times, and which is mentioned in the itineraries col- 

 lected at Semipolatinsk, is in the volcanic territory of Bishbalik. 

 This insular mountain is situated to the west of the ammoniac- 

 cavern of Kobok, and to the north of Pechan, which still 

 emits light, and which formerly discharged lava, and at a dis- 

 tance of sixty leagues from each of these two points. From 

 Lake Ala-kul to Lake Zaisang, where the Russian Cossacks of 

 the line of the Irtish, exercise the right of fishing, by conni- 

 vance of the Mandarins, the distance is reckoned at fifty-one 

 leagues. The Tarbagatai, at the foot of which is situated 

 Choogonchak, a town of Chinese Mongolia, and where Dr 

 Meyer, the learned and enterprising companion of M. Lede- 

 bour, fruitlessly essayed, in 1825, to prosecute his researches in 

 natural history, extends to the south-west of Lake Zaisang to- 

 wards the Ala-kul *. We are thus acquainted, in the interior 



• I do not wish to express any doubt respecting the existence of the Ala- 

 kul and the Alaktugul-noor lakes, in the vicinity of each other ; but it ap- 

 pears singular to me, that the Tartars and Mongols, who traverse these parts 

 80 often, and who have been questioned at Semipolatinsk, should only know 

 the Ala-kul, and assert that the Alaktugul-noor owes its existence to a con- 

 fusion of names. M. Pansner, in his Russian map of Inner Asia, which may 

 be implicitly relied on with regard to the country north of the course of the 



