62 VIEWS OF NATUEE. 



lence ; also cotton (Gossypium religiosum), which covers the 

 fields like yellow clouds. In summer the heat is extremely 

 great, and in winter there is here, as at Turfan, neither intense 

 cold nor heavy snow." The neighbourhood of Khotan, 

 Kaschgar, and Yarkand still, as in the time of Marco Polo,* 

 pays its tribute in home-grown cotton. In the oasis of Hanoi 

 (Khamil), above 200 miles east of Aksu, orange trees, pome- 

 granates, and the finer vines are found to flourish. 



The products of cultivation which are here noticed lead to 

 the belief that over extensive districts the elevation of the soil 

 is very slight. At so great a distance from the sea side, 

 and in the easterly situation which so much increases the 

 degree of winter cold, a plateau, as high as Madrid or 

 Munich, might indeed have a very hot summer, but would 

 hardly have, in 43° and 44° latitude, an extremely mild and 

 almost snowless winter. I have seen a high summer heat 

 favour the cultivation of the vine, as at the Caspian Sea, 83 

 feet below the level of the Black Sea (at Astrachan, latitude 

 46° 21'); but the winter cold is there from — 4° to - 13°. 

 Moreover, the vine is sunk to a greater depth in the ground 

 after the month of November. We can understand that cul- 

 tivated plants, which, as it were, live only in the summer, as 

 the vine, the cotton plant, rice, and melons, may be cultivated 

 with success between the latitudes of 40° and 44°, on plateaux 

 at an elevation of more than 3000f feet, and may be favoured 

 by the action of radiant heat ; but how could the pomegranate 

 trees of Aksu, and the orange trees of Hami, whose fruit 

 Father Grosier extolled as excellent, endure a long and severe 

 winter (the necessary consequence of a great elevation^)? 

 Carl Zimmerman § has shown it to be extremely probable 

 that the Tarim depression, or the desert between the moun- 

 tain chain of Thian-schan and Kuen-lun, where the steppe 

 river Tarimgol discharges itself into the Lake of Lop, 

 formerly described as an alpine lake, is hardly 1280 feet 

 above the level of the sea, or only twice the elevation of 

 Prague. Sir Alexander Burnes also ascribes to Bokhara only 



* II Milione di Marco Polo, pubbl. dal Conte Baldclli, t. i. pp. 32 

 and 87. 



+ 500 toises in the German, accurately 3197 feet. Tk. 



% Asie centrale, t. ii. pp. 4S — 52 and 429. 



§ In the learned Analyses of his Karte von Inner Asien, 1841, s. 99. 



